The Russian government was clearly “the primary wrongdoer” for hacking into Democratic computers and funneling purloined documents to WikiLeaks to disseminate, found Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. But as a foreign sovereign, he wrote, Russia was immune from any liability.
Koeltl ruled that the First Amendment protected the actions of WikiLeaks in publishing the documents. The same protections covered Trump campaign officials, who did not release any stolen documents but were eager to benefit from their publication, he found.
“There is a significant legal distinction between stealing documents and disclosing documents that someone else had stolen previously,” Koeltl wrote. Like a news outlet, he said, WikiLeaks could not be held liable for releasing the documents so long as it did not “participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place.”
The judge’s ruling came several months after special counsel Robert Mueller concluded his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The inquiry did not find evidence to establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia’s effort to influence the election results.
Koeltl refused the Trump campaign’s request to penalize the national committee for filing the lawsuit last year. He said the complaint was not “so objectively unreasonable” that the plaintiffs should be disciplined for it.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.