The lawsuit, filed by the DNC in April 2018, names a slew of figures as defendants, such as the Russian state, Russia's military intelligence service GRU, the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, and several members of the Trump campaign, such as Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Jared Kushner, and George Papadopoulos.

According to an 87-page indictment, the DNC accused Russia and the other defendants of carrying out the hacking of DNC servers in 2016 and then leaking data online via the WikiLeaks portal in an orchestrated manner for the benefit of the Trump presidential campaign.

The lawsuit, which has its own Wikipedia page and was likened to a lawsuit the DNC filed against Nixon after the Watergate scandal, seeks damages, but also for the court to issue a declaration about the defendants' conspiracy.

In a letter sent to a New York court signed by a representative of the Russian Ministry of Justice, the Russian Federation wants the lawsuit thrown out. In the 12-page letter, the Russian Federation argues that the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act ("FSIA") grants Russia immunity.

"The FSIA provides that foreign sovereign States enjoy absolute jurisdictional immunity from suit unless a plaintiff can demonstrate that one of the FSIA's enumerated 'exceptions' applies'", the letter argues. "The DNC's allegations about a purported 'military attack' by 'Russia's military intelligence agency' do not fall within any of the FSIA's enumerated exceptions to the Russian Federation's sovereign immunity."