The Democratic National Committee set up a brand-new Twitter account just to slap WikiLeaks with a lawsuit

Wikileaks.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The Democratic National Committee has been trying to sue WikiLeaks for months. It just couldn't find the clandestine group.

So in a rare move, DNC lawyers took to Twitter on Friday to serve four court documents officially suing WikiLeaks over the 2016 DNC email hack. Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll had never tweeted before. But when the firm couldn't reach the secret-leaking nonprofit by email, it opted to serve the suit in a very public tweet, CBS News reports.

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The massive lawsuit also targets WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, several Trump campaign officials, and the entire Russian government. It alleges the Trump campaign worked with Russia to leak DNC emails in the summer of 2016, ultimately dooming Hillary Clinton's campaign. WikiLeaks posted the leaked information, apparently tying it into the conspiracy.

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The court documents posted on Twitter are dated April 20, 2018, and WikiLeaks indicated it read the lawsuit in a tweet the next day. But the DNC never officially reached WikiLeaks by email to formally sue the site, it told the court last month.

But WikiLeaks uses Twitter every day, so a judge okayed DNC lawyers' stratey to slide into WikiLeaks' Twitter mentions and serve up a lawsuit they couldn't ignore. Read more about the lawsuit at CBS News.

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Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.