Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez refused to say whether or not the frivilous lawsuit against the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks and Russia was ordered by failed candidate Hillary Clinton.
The lawsuit claims there was a vast conspiracy to prevent her from winning the election.
When asked if Clinton pushed the party to file the lawsuit, Perez did not answer.
“You’ll have to ask Secretary Clinton,” Perez said.
DNC head Tom Perez refuses to say whether lawsuit against @WikiLeaks was really Hillary Clinton's idea and how much it is going to cost Democrats https://t.co/whrfnl9Ned
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 22, 2018
After Todd reworded the question and asked if she knew about it, Perez claimed that he did not “ask her permission” prior to the filing — again dancing around the question.
“I have not consulted Hillary Clinton to ask her permission to file a complaint. The buck stops with Tom Perez and we filed this complaint because our democracy is at risk,” Perez said. “This was an assault on our democracy and we have to protect that.”
Senator Claire McCaskill has called the lawsuit a “silly distraction” and Rep. Jackie Speier stated that it is “ill-conceived … not in the interest of the American people.”
Perez responded to the anger from his party by asserting that he is “punching back” against the election results.
“I’m punching back not only for my colleagues, I’m punching back for democracy,” Perez said.
The Democratic Party is dead broke heading into the 2018 midterms. According to their year-end filing, the party is more than $6 million in debt with just over $6.3 million on hand.
Meanwhile, their Republican rivals are flush with cash.
“Republicans are swimming in pools of money. The Republican National Committee had raised $132 million by the end of 2017 — about twice as much as the DNC — and entered 2018 with almost $40 million to spare, with not a penny of debt,” the Week reports.
When asked by host Chuck Todd how much the lawsuit is going to cost, as the party is currently broke, Perez refused to answer the question.
“How much are you taking away from 2018 to focus on 2016?” Todd asked.
“Chuck, we can’t afford not to do this. When you look ahead and you see what was done before and what they’re trying to do again, our democracy is at stake. It’s hard to win elections when you have interference in elections. We’ve been winning elections. We know how to walk and chew gum,” Perez said.
Perez also claimed that they could not wait for Robert Mueller to conclude his investigation and announce their findings because of a statute of limitations, but would not say how long they had left to file.
“How close to this deadline are you?” Todd asked.
“Again, I don’t know when Director Mueller is going to file his complaint or whatever action he takes,” Perez said, avoiding the question.
