'It's incredibly spine-chilling to read': Watch a DNC staffer explain why lawsuit against Russians and Republicans matters

On Friday, the Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against the Trump campaign officials, Russia and Wikileaks, alleging that they conspired to interfere in the party's business during the 2016 presidential election.

The lawsuit was immediately mocked by Russian state media and Donald Trump, and by outlets like National Public Radio, which published a news story saying it was "unlikely to yield any outcome."

But the situation is coming into better focus as Democratic officials explain the thinking. Starting with the fact that, unlike Mueller, "you can't fire a lawsuit."

Luis Miranda, former communications director for the Democratic National Committee, went on MSNBC today to give his take. Miranda was a victim of the hacking, having his personal emails stolen and being threatened by trolls.

"The reality is that Republicans have a lot to answer for here—his campaign has a lot to answer for, and that's what's really going to be at stake," he said.

As he explained, it's all part of establishing the dirty tricks and getting punishment for them as a deterrent to future interference of this type.

"It's an untold part of this story—the difficult conditions under which the Democratic Party staff had to operate, with a barrage of threats, attacks, constant harassment, phones being spoofed, all kinds of things that really made it incredibly difficult to do the external and internal communications of the party."

And the damages are real, he said.

"The DNC really does have standing here in terms of real damage," he said. "The millions of dollars that they potentially lost out on in donations, the money they spend trying to clean out the system and mitigate from these attacks."