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In a question on the politics stack exchange, a user asks why the Democratic National committee tried to prevent Bernie Sanders from being selected as their candidate in the 2016 presidential election. Is the underlying supposition of this question true? The listed claim includes a Newsweek article about a lawsuit:

A class action lawsuit alleging the Democratic National Committee worked in conjunction with Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign to keep Bernie Sanders out of the White House has been raging on in the courtrooms for months on end

...but it has not been resolved, so no evidence is provided by this. Is there a source with better evidence to suggest that there was genuinely an anti-Bernie conspiracy in the DNC?

One notable example of the claim is this graphic produced by Wikileaks, which claims there is such evidence somewhere within 19,252 emails they released - but gives no details:

Graphic about WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails

Evan Carroll
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    Some guy on Politics.SE isn't a notable claim. The notable claim appears to be the class action suit itself, which in turn is something we can't answer until the courts resolve it. – Oddthinking Oct 18 '17 at 20:59
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    Pretty much everything the DNC did to help/hinder the Sanders campaign is revealed in the e-mail dump. Whether that amounts to "trying to prevent Bernie Sanders from being nominated" or just being less helpful to a candidate that didn't have much of a pre-existing relationship with the DNC (because he had not previously been a Democrat and had a tenuous relationship to the party in general) will inevitably be a matter of opinion. – antlersoft Oct 18 '17 at 22:48
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    @antlersoft People also say that the email dump showed that Clinton was running a child rape ring in a pizzeria, so asking for sources doesn't seem unreasonable. Wikileaks also isn't impartial and is known for disinformation (in this case afaik most of the claims of illicit activity are about things happening *after* Sanders already mathematically lost). That said, I agree with Oddthinking. At least as long as no proper source for a specific claim is included (which actually shouldn't be that difficult). – tim Oct 19 '17 at 06:36
  • Whoops, I hit re-open because I thought the close reason was that the linked question wasn't a "notable claim", then only noticed afterwards that the actual close reason was that it's an ongoing court case. I guess we need to just follow the details of the ongoing court case and wait... Can my reopen vote be removed? – user56reinstatemonica8 Oct 19 '17 at 09:56
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    I would try to separate this question from the lawsuit for two reasons: 1) It may be off-topic as it may be ongoing (though AFAIK the suit was already dismissed) 2) It's not actually that relevant. There were claims about this long before the lawsuit, and more importantly, the lawsuit could be resolved without giving us any actual answer (eg by ruling that it is irrelevant whether the DNC favored Clinton, because the DNC can choose their candidate however they want because of freedom of association; this is AFAIK what happened, although I might confuse multiple lawsuits here?). – tim Oct 19 '17 at 10:34
  • That's fairly widely held believe - both among Sander supporters as well as among alt-right types. – ventsyv Oct 19 '17 at 14:16
  • Also, having a lawsuit going on is not a reason enough to close this question. We know for a fact that the DNC was hacked and it's emails leaked. There are no indications anything was doctored. It's not surprising that the DNC was behind Hillary - she's been a democratic party insider & leader for many years, Bernie on the other hand was independent - he never raised funds for the Dems, never went on the stump for them, etc. It's only natural that he would not be popular with the political operatives. – ventsyv Oct 19 '17 at 14:27
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    @ventsyv Wikileaks is not a reliable source. It has promoted various nonsense conspiracy theories, sometimes even including antisemitism. It is basically a propaganda outlet with strong ties to Russia. That's not to say that anything was doctored, but that the material should be evaluated carefully (not only because it might be doctored, but because wikileaks has a history of using real leaks, but misrepresenting their meaning); any answer using wikileaks as primary source without secondary sources backing up the claims would be a weak answer. – tim Oct 19 '17 at 14:46
  • @oddthinking Why not just migrate this one to politics se? –  Oct 19 '17 at 16:37
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    @fredsbend It would probably be considered a duplicate to the one linked from this question. – Jeff Lambert Oct 19 '17 at 21:06
  • @fredsbend: If there are no answers, and no significant votes, the OP can just cut-and-paste. – Oddthinking Oct 19 '17 at 23:07
  • @tim What news organization isn't impartial? And please do show one example of Wikileaks publishing something that was wrong. Just one example will do. – dan-klasson Feb 25 '20 at 15:29
  • @dan-klasson There are [many examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Promotion_of_conspiracy_theories), including conspiracy theories about John Podesta [taking part in satanic rituals](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920), implying that Seth Rich was murdered for working for wikileaks, etc. "Impartial" is difficult to define, but here we should strive for sources which do not peddle absurd and antisemitic conspiracy theories and which are not suspected to be compromised by the Russian government. – tim Feb 25 '20 at 17:20
  • @tim So giving out a reward for finding Seth Rich's killer and posting the content of John Podesta's weird emails is dabbling in conspiracy theories? Even if that's true. How is that spreading disinfo? Again, please provide me with one example of something that Wikileaks published that turned out to be false. Plus do also share how Wikileaks is anti-semtic and compromised by the Russian government. – dan-klasson Feb 25 '20 at 17:40
  • @dan-klasson If you sincerely don't see how the linked tweet about a dinner Podesta [neither emailed about nor attended](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/john-podesta-spirit-cooking/) is dabbling in satanic conspiracy theories, I doubt I can provide further examples which you will accept. But if you are interested, feel free to read the wikipedia article I linked to which details some of the antisemitism and Russian influence. – tim Feb 25 '20 at 18:05
  • @tim Read the article you linked to. It clearly states he did in fact receive this email and forwarded it to his brother. Not anywhere in their tweet or in the article they linked to, did they mention anything about satanic rituals. In the Wikipedia articles there are accusations of what you mention. That's very different from it being a fact. And you've still not given me a single example of something that Wikileaks published that turned out to be wrong. And I love it how you accuse Wikileaks of dabbling in conspiracy theories, because that's exactly what you're doing. – dan-klasson Feb 25 '20 at 18:31

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