His Name Was Seth Rich: The Untold True Story

Doug Rasmussen

This book is dedicated above all to my family, I want to thank them for their years of love and their constant, unwavering support. It has meant more to me than I can put into words. It is also dedicated to those who have worked tirelessly to help expose the malfeasance in the Russian investigation over the past few years, Dan Bongino, Sara Carter, Mollie Hemmingway, John Solomon, Devin Nunes, and countless others, this work would not have been possible without your information. It is also dedicated to Ed Butowsky, who helped me uncover the truth and was always willing to make time for my questions. I believe that history will remember everyone listed as brave and patriotic individuals who told the truth, even while the rest of the world was focused on lies.  

Note: This is the free version of this book. If you enjoy it and find value in the content, or just want it on your favorite platform like Kindle or Nook, please buy a copy. It goes a long way to support me and to encourage future work (this took a long time to write, years of painstaking research to put it all together, and was not easy to balance with a full time job). If no one cares I won’t go through that again. If they want me to and there is an audience, I will.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – The Botched Robbery and the Official Story

Chapter 2 – The Official Story Starts to Crumble

Chapter 3 – The Official Story Continues Falling to Pieces

Chapter 4 - The Reporter and the Secret Tape

Chapter 5 – The Inside Source

Chapter 6 – The Chain of Custody

Chapter 7 – The Russian Hack (that wasn’t a Russian hack)

Chapter 8 – The Inside Job

Chapter 9 - The Liars at the Top

Chapter 10 – Putting it All Together

Chapter 11 – Ed Butowsky

Chapter 12 – The Fox News’s Article Ignites A Legal War

Chapter 13- The Legal Warfare Continues

Chapter 14 – The Unearthed Truth

Epilogue- The Elephant in the Room

Chapter 1 – The Botched Robbery and the Official Story

 In the early morning hours of July 10th, 2016, Seth Rich, an employee of the Democratic National Committee was the victim of an unexpected tragedy. While walking home from a night out Seth was murdered on the street for unknown reasons and by unknown assailants. His death was and is still surrounded by a multitude of questions and mysterious circumstances. Seth’s death has officially been labelled a “botched robbery.” Many people doubt this explanation. Because his murder happened just twelve days before Wikileaks published the incredibly damaging internal emails of the DNC leadership, and a large percent of the population believe that the leaks are somehow connected to Seth’s death. I am going to do my best to tell you what actually happened and to show what connections, if any, there are between Seth’s murder and the email leaks. I will also back my words up with proof.  But before I go too far into that endeavor, before anyone has a chance to get lost in the dizzying details, the mystery, the political intrigue, and everything else that surrounds this case and has since the beginning, I want you to remember that the story of Seth Rich starts with a mother losing a son. It began with a brother losing his sibling and a girlfriend losing the love of her life. It begins with a driven young man, full of potential and hope for the future, alone and dying, slowly bleeding out into the street. It’s important to keep this reality in mind as the story has potentially seismic political ramifications. No one should let their political affiliation get in the way of the pursuit for the truth in this situation, this isn’t just a bribe or political dirty trick, it was the murder of human being. The American people deserve to hear the truth about what happened, and Seth’s story deserves to be heard. This book represents my best attempts to do just that.

Seth Rich entered the national consciousness in the summer of 2016. He first drew national headlines mainly because at the time of his murder he was working as the Voter Data Director for the Democratic National Committee, responsible for registering new voters and protecting against voter suppression. At first it appeared to be a random of act of violence, a late-night robbery gone wrong, and no one had much reason to think his death might have been connected to his job working with the DNC. On July 10th, 2016, Seth was walking back to his apartment after a night out at the local bars. It was just after 4 in the morning he was attacked. Judging from the presence of bruises on his hands, knees, and face it appears that he fought with his attackers. Ultimately, he ended up getting shot in the back two times. The resulting injuries proved to be fatal hours later after he was rushed to a local hospital.

Questions started to arise fairly early on. There was nothing missing from Seth’s person after the incident. He still had his wallet, watch, and phone when he was found by police just minutes after the shooting. Police were able to respond to the scene quickly due to the use of a gunshot locater known as Shot Spotter. When police found Seth he was conscious and alive, yet unable to communicate clearly and managed to survive for a few hours later. Police saw no suspects on scene. Upon reviewing the area’s surveillance tapes there wasn’t anything that helped them identify the shooters, the most they found was footage that caught the legs of two people near the scene. Police told Mary Rich, Seth’s mother, that they believed these two people could be the shooters.

The First of the Leaks

        On July 22nd, 2016, just ten days after Seth Rich was found murdered, the Democratic National Committee found itself at the center of a massive political scandal. The same organization that had employed Seth as a data analyst suffered a massive data breach. Wikileaks published a leak that contained the internal communications of seven members of the DNC’s leadership. The leak contained 19,252 emails and over 8,000 attachments, and included their correspondence from January 2015 through May 2016.

The emails were an unmitigated political catastrophe for the Democratic National Committee. In order to understand the fallout of these leaks it is important to understand that the Democratic National Committee is the official governing body for the Democratic Party in the United States. They take in money and spend money, they coordinate with the media, the schedule events and set up the system for picking delegates. Publicly, the DNC claims to be neutral until voters have chosen a candidate to represent the party in an election. The leaked emails showed this was anything but true, in fact the emails showed an organizational distain for then presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and a clear favoritism for his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Emails showed DNC staff mocking Sanders and discussing ways to ensure Hillary would secure the nomination over him. It would later come out that the DNC’s rigging of the Primary race for Hillary went much deeper than what was revealed on the emails, but what was revealed was enough to set off a political firestorm.

The emails revealed an inappropriate and completely unethical relationship with the media as well. One email mentioned how Maggie Habberman, then of Politico and now of the New York Times, was considered a “friendly journalist” to them. They go on to say that she had been willing to “tee up” stories for them in the past and had never disappointed. Maggie Habermann has a long history of writing stories that benefit the Democrat Party and became particularly well known for her role in pushing the theory of Trump-Russia collusion. Here is the an expert from that email.

Another email described how they were able to direct media on what they could or couldn’t publish. For example, one email revealed that the DNC leadership instructed a New York Times reporter, Nicholas Confessare, to stop pursuing certain questions and to not cover certain aspects of a story that they did not like. They celebrated his compliance.

Bizarrely, the emails also exposed that the media would often approach the DNC to have them pick questions for them to ask Republican politicians. In one email they say that “CNN is looking for questions” to ask Republican Senator Ted Cruz during an interview. The DNC also gave CNN a list of questions to ask Trump during an interview, and CNBC’s John Harwood asked John Podesta what questions he should ask Jeb Bush. Another email revealed that former CNN reporter Donna Brazile, who had been a member of the DNC for years, had leaked debate questions to Hillary before a CNN town hall so that she would have time to prescript her response. “From time to time I get the questions in advance” Brazile wrote, before relaying a full debate question, word for word, that Hillary would be asked about her stance on the death penalty. “I’ll send a few more,” she added. Brazile was ultimately fired from CNN due to this conduct.

        Perhaps the most damning aspect of these emails was that they showed a strong favoritism among DNC leadership towards Hillary Clinton, and an animosity towards her most serious opponent within the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders. There had long been rumors that the DNC was “rigging the vote” against Bernie, but there had been little in terms of concrete proof up to this point. That all changed with the release of the emails. Messages showed, in plain language, that the DNC was actively working to sabotage the Bernie Sanders campaign. It was also clear that they were doing this in order to help the Clinton campaign. These revelations led to Bernie Sanders publicly calling for the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In response, and amid turmoil and controversy from the leaks, Wasserman Schultz resigned from her post just one day before the Democratic National Convention was scheduled to take place in Philadelphia.  A July 24th Washington Post article released two days after the leaks and just before the convention captures the political climate of the moment, describing the fallout of the emails between the Sanders campaign and the DNC. In the article titled “Clinton Campaign - and some cyber experts – say Russia behind email release,” they wrote...

“The most explosive new revelation from the WikiLeaks release was an official’s suggestion that Sanders’ religious faith, or lack thereof, could be flagged as a way to dissuade voters from backing him in Bible belt states.

“I think I read he is an atheist,” the DNC chief financial officer, Brad Marshall, wrote in one email. “This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” 

Sanders, who is Jewish, spoke little of religion during the primary, but the sight of a supposedly neutral body apparently seeking to weaken one of its own party candidates caused particular anger among progressives.” (Hamburger and Nakashima)

They continued to describe the reaction to this within the democratic party…

“The emails have infuriated Sanders supporters, who have repeatedly accused the DNC of improperly helping the Clinton campaign during the primary. The episode prompted the resignation Sunday of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.” (Hamburger and Nakashima)

They go on to quote Jeff Weaver, Sanders campaign manager.

“They said they were neutral, which we knew not to be true,” said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver. “Now we have evidence in black and white that they were trying to put out negative stories about Bernie Sanders. People are very angry about these leaks, and rightfully so. There’s no doubt about that.” (Hamburger and Nakashima)

The anger coming from Sander’s supporters, who made up a significant portion of the democratic voter base, was palpable. Their candidate had just been unfairly taken out by the DNC and the Clinton team. Now they found themselves being asked to turn around and support the very people who had betrayed them, the Clinton Campaign and the DNC. It was a political catastrophe, although admittingly a catastrophe of the DNC’s own making. The article continues…

“Beyond Mook (Clinton’s campaign chief), DNC and Clinton campaign officials have not responded to requests for comment Friday as reporters and unnerved campaign staff tried to assess the damage caused by the release, which comes just as the party holds a nominating convention in Philadelphia designed to project unity after a bitter primary season.” (Hamburger and Nakashima)

With the advantage of hindsight, we know what came next for the leadership. The fallout over the emails continued and Wasserman Schultz was not the only resignation. After the Convention her lead was followed and resignations were announced from CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda.

        When Wasserman Schultz stepped down, she left a vacancy at the top of the DNC. Her spot was replaced by Donna Brazile. Donna Brazile was the same CNN reporter who had been caught feeding Hillary Clinton debate questions in the past, and she would know be serving as interim chair to a DNC swimming in controversy. At the time of the DNC email leaks Donna Brazile was the Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, a post she had been appointed to in 2000. She had been among the leadership of the DNC for years and had served as interim Chair once before in 2011. Donna Brazile later wrote an article for Politico where she describes just how subversive the Hillary campaigns takeover of the DNC truly was. In this article Donna Brazile explained that when she stepped into the role as chair, she had learned that a year earlier the DNC had been 24 million dollars in debt. She was told that the debt had been accumulated during Obama’s previous campaign for the presidency and still had not been paid off. Donna also learned that there had been an agreement reached between the DNC and the Clinton Campaign, the Hillary campaign would agree to take over the existing debt and in exchange the Hillary campaign would be given total control of the DNC. This meant that the Hillary campaign would control the DNC’s day to day operations, the party’s finances, it’s strategy, and the use of all future money that would be raised. This type of control over day to day operations was not supposed to be given to any candidate until that candidate had been officially chosen as the nominee by the party’s voter base, yet Hillary had managed to get this power 15 months before she secured the Democratic nomination. Though the public got a glimpse of this control through the emails, and through them it became clear that the Clinton team had been running the show, the suspect circumstances of how this takeover had been allowed to happen was not revealed until later. It did not matter, Sander’s supporters might not have known exactly how it came to be this way, but they knew that the DNC had been turned against Bernie, but they knew that they had. the damage had been done,

        By examining the contents of the emails released in the leak and the revelations made by Brazile, one thing is made abundantly clear; the entire DNC had become a corrupt cesspool under complete control of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Through the use of political favors, press manipulation, shady donations, and quid pro quo arrangements the DNC worked to achieve one goal, subvert the democratic process to ensure Hillary Clinton was the Democratic Nominee for President. It is also clear that her campaign staff weas the driving force behind this corruption and that Bernie Sanders was the primary victim. It doesn’t take much of a detective to determine that the people who had done so much to illicitly take control of the DNC would prefer that none of this information would ever became public knowledge. It might even reflect poorly enough on the Hillary campaign to swing the entire election against her. The DNC needed to make this go away, and they needed it to go away badly. The only way out of this mess was to shift focus away from what the emails actually contained and to portray the DNC as innocent victims in this scenario. To do this they needed someone to blame for the leak, they needed a culprit. Just two days after the emails were released, we see that both members of the DNC and officials from the Obama administration had been suggesting that Russia (along with help from Trump) was to blame for the WikiLeaks release. The July 24th Washington Post article also shows this story being pushed as early as two days after Wikileaks published the DNC emails, well before any of them would have had any way of knowing if it was true. From the article…

“A top official with Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Sunday accused the Russian government of orchestrating the release of damaging Democratic Party records to help the campaign of Republican Donald Trump — and some cybersecurity experts agree.

The extraordinary charge came as some national security officials have been growing increasingly concerned about possible efforts by Russia to meddle in the election, according to several individuals familiar with the situation.

Late last week, hours before the records were released by the website WikiLeaks, the White House convened a high-level security meeting to discuss reports that Russia had hacked into systems at the Democratic National Committee.” (Hamburger and Nakashima)

        We can see that the DNC desperately needed someone to blame for the leaks. They needed to portray themselves as victims to help shift public focus away from the damning content of them emails, and onto the “plot” that had been carried out against them. In order to do this, however, they needed a scapegoat whom the media and the intelligence community would be happy to see damaged regardless of the truth. They clearly settled on an idea almost immediately; blame the Russian government for being behind the leaks and implicate the Trump team by claiming that they had helped. They started with the statements in this article, and over time came out with more and more “evidence” supposedly proving this premise. To understand just how much impact the events of the DNC leak, and the question of who was behind them, had on the direction of American Politics and of the country in general, one needs a basic understanding of how Russia ended up being blamed for the leaks. Most American’s will know that it is supposedly a demonstratable fact that this is what occurred; we all have been told a thousand times that the Russian Government was behind these email leaks. To question this is like questioning whether or not the earth is round, it’s the domain of unserious and wacky people. But how did everyone get so sure? In order to answer that question, we need to review the timeline of events that led to this determination being reached, we need to go over how the “official story” became the “official story.” Given the certainty that so many have about Russia being to blame we should expect to find a clear and legitimate investigation that produced real and incontrovertible evidence. After all, anyone who suggests there might be an alternate explanation for how the emails were leaked is called a “conspiracy theorist” and is accused of pushing “right wing talking points.” Surely that means the case against Russia is airtight. While we cover how the official story came to be, try to identify the key players responsible for its creation. Ask yourself, which individuals, governmental agencies, and private organizations primarily shaped the conclusion?

What follows is general outline of how things supposedly went according to official sources, namely the intelligence agencies and the mainstream media. It is presented without too much scrutiny from me, even when things seem to not add up.    

        .

Crowdstrike Analysis of the DNC Servers

        To begin we need to first look at the event that started it all, the release of the DNC email leaks by Wikileaks. According to the DNC, they were first made aware that there had been a security breach in their servers on April 29th, 2016. It was then that Wasserman Schultz and several other DNC leaders were informed that a large amount of data had been stolen from their servers, including of their entire email communications. The person breaking this news was Michael Sussman, a for the DNC lawyer who specializes in cyber security. Sussman represented the DNC on behalf of the law firm Perkins Coie. It appears that the job of cleaning up the mess from the leaks fell to the lawyers at Perkins Coie representing the DNC. Curiously Perkins Coie did not notify the FBI that a crime had been committed or try to solicit there help, but instead they chose to hire a private cyber security firm by the name of Crowdstrike. According to Crowdstrike they spent a day reviewing the DNC’s servers and were able to ascertain that two Russian hackers (or groups of hackers) had been infiltrating the servers illicitly. They referred to them as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear. Eventually Crowdstrike concluded that it was one of these two groups who was responsible for the hacks.

Crowdstrike’s strategy for responding to the breach was essentially to do nothing, Crowdstrike took no countermeasures to prevent further access of their servers by these two entities. This recommendation came from cybersecurity expert Robert Johnston, who claimed his decision was guided by Russia’s past behavior. He claimed that in the past Russia had never been known to publish the results of their hacks. He describes making his recommendation to the DNC officials in the Buzzfeed article “He Solved the DNC Hack, and Now He’s Telling his Story”

“They were not just horrified but puzzled. “They're looking at me,” Johnston recalled, “and they're asking, ‘What are they going to do with the data that was taken?’”

“So, Johnston said, “I start thinking back to all of these previous hacks by Russia and other adversaries like China. I think back to the Joint Chiefs hack. What did they do with this data? Nothing. They took the information for espionage purposes. They didn’t leak it to WikiLeaks.”” (Leapold)

Confident that Russia would not release the emails, they did not publicly reveal their suspicions regarding the breach. This silence lasted until shortly after Julian Assange, the founder of the well known news outlet Wikileaks, publicly announced that he had received DNC emails and was going to publish them on June 12th 2016. Wikileaks had become a household name for publishing internal, and often embarrassing or controversial, government documents in the past. The Buzzfeed article describes what happened the following day, the DNC and Crowdstrike reached out to the Washington Post and claimed, without offering any sort of evidence, that they had discovered malware inside the DNC servers and that they had determined it had come from the Russians.

“So, Johnston said, in a story confirmed by DNC officials, CrowdStrike and the DNC decided to give the story to the Washington Post, which on June 14, 2016, published the story: “Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump.” “I thought it was a smart move,” Johnston said.” This is the first time the public was told that Russia had been behind the breach.” (Leapold)

On June 15th, the day after the Washington Post article was released, an online persona by the name of Guccifer 2.0 appeared online and took credit for the DNC hacks. Guccifer posted five documents purported to be from the hack, the first of which was the “Trump Opposition Research” that the DNC had announced was stolen in the Washington Post article that had been released just one day prior. Throughout the rest of June and early July Guccifer makes several posts online claiming to contain documents taken from the DNC. Most of them where publicly available documents or private donor lists, and none of them made any sort of real impact. It was not until July 22nd, the same day Wikileaks released the DNC emails, that Guccifer 2.0 took public credit for the DNC email leak specifically. Guccifer 2.0’s account tweeted the following message, "@Wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I'd given them!!!"

On September 13, 2016, a supposed representative of Guccifer 2.0 publicly released 700 MB of additional DNC documents. These did not contain any additional emails and were documents dated from between 2009 and 2011. (34) Although they did not appear to be part of the same leak, the media and DNC took this as further proof of Guccifer 2.0’s guilt. According to an NBC report of the Sept. 13th leaks, “Hacker Guccifer 2.0 Releases More DNC Docs – Including Tim Kaine’s Cell Number, ”Donna Brazile, took the occasion to connect this back to the Russian government and also to implicate Trump.

“Interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile on Tuesday again blamed the Russian government for the hack and called it an "effort to influence the presidential election."

"There’s one person who stands to benefit from these criminal acts, and that’s Donald Trump," she said.” (Winter)

 On October 4, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 released what he claimed were hacked documents from the Clinton Foundation, although this release was eventually concluded to be a hoax that had been assembled from emails obtained via other sources as well as some that were fabricated. Although none of the additional releases contained direct emails from the DNC like the July 22nd release, the repeated claim of responsibility that came with each additional release of documents led to Guccifer 2.0 becoming widely recognized as the source Wikileaks used to obtain the DNC emails. Crowdstike, remember, had blamed the leaks on two groups named Fatty Bear and Cozy Bear. How did they account for this apparent contradiction, that the hacks had actually been carried out by Guccifer 2.0? Their explanation was simple, they speculated that Guccifer 2.0 was likely 'part of a Russian Intelligence disinformation campaign." It was and is their stance that Guccifer 2.0 is not a real person or group, but a state actor designed to deflect blame for the hacks away from Russia.  Despite the contradictions about who exactly did the hacking Crowdstrike stands behind their conclusions. It didn’t really matter which account of the hack was correct, whether Lazy and Cozy Bear had behind the hack or whether it was Guccifer 2.0 alone. According to Crowdstrike the end result was the same either way; everything pointed to Russia being the ultimate culprit.

The Steele Dossier

        While Perkins Coie was busy trying to put out the fire created by the leaks by hiring Crowdstrike to help promote the idea that Russia had been behind the leaks, they also took another approach; they hired an opposition research group by the name of Fusion GPS to help push the Russian angle. Fusion GPS’s specific task was to dig into the connection between Trump’s Campaign and the Russian Government and look for anything that could be used to link them together. Fusion GPS was also asked to focus on finding information that implicated them both in the DNC email leaks. Fusion GPS is a very secretive company that operates in the technically legal yet ethically questionable field of opposition research. In simpler terms, they run a business where politicians can pay to have dirt dug up on their political opponents. Their website reflects the discretion that goes along with this industry, containing only their email address and this brief description…

“Fusion GPS is based in Washington, DC and provides premium research, strategic intelligence, and due diligence services to corporations, law firms, and investors worldwide.

We offer a cross-disciplinary approach with expertise in media, politics, regulation, national security, and global markets.” (www.fusiongps.com)

They are well known in the world of privately contracted opposition research. Politicians of all stripes, media outlets, and lobbying groups have all paid them to look into, and dig up dirt, on specific groups or individuals (whom are often political opposition of those who hired Fusion). To complete the task brought to them from Perkins Coie on behalf of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS hired an ex-MI6 agent by the name of Christopher Steele. Steele, whom had specialized in dealing with Russian intelligence while at MI6, was tasked with heading up their research efforts into Trump-Russia collusion.  He was asked to gather and compile evidence that showed the Trump campaign had been illegally colluding with the Russian government, and to also show that they had done so in order to influence the results of 2016 election. He was chosen because his time at MI6 had given him experience with Russian government and sources close to the Kremlin.

According to the Federalist, this is the general structure of how Steele was hired to create this anti-Trump document…

“The Washington Post reported last week that Perkins Coie, an - international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election.” (Davis)

In June of 2016 Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS and ex Wall Street Journal reporter, met with Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 agent who had spent his career focused on the Russians, and asked him to look into Trump, focusing on his connections with Russia. Simpson claims that he asked Steele to focus on Trump-Russia collusion, in part, because he had been told that Russia had been behind hacking the DNC. This information had presumably come to him from a contact within the DNC as he made this request in June and it would not be publicly alleged that Russia had been involved until a month later in July. The dossier that Steele ultimately came up with, which would famously become known as the Steele Dossier, contained a plethora of allegations that were described by then FBI Director James Comey as “salacious and unverified.” Among them were allegations that (Steele)…

• Russian authorities had been working with Trump for at least 5 years, and they had done so at the direction of Putin.
• There had been a sophisticated conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. They exchanged valuable information with one and another and planted operatives loyal to them inside the DNC. In addition to this they acquired hackers that were located in both the United States and in Russia.
• Russia had obtained blackmail on Trump. This was supposedly a video of Trump, filmed at the Ritz Carlton hotel during a trip he taken there for a 2013 Miss Universe pageant, where he can be seen directing several prostitutes to urinate on a bed that Obama had once slept on. This activity was described as a “golden shower show,” and had apparently been the result of a deep hatred Trump held for Obama.
• The Trump Campaign members Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Michael Cohen were involved in this conspiracy. Manafort was described as the leader of the role that the Trump Campaign had played in this conspiracy.
• That Russia had been responsible for the hacking of the DNC and the emails subsequent release to Wikileaks. It was also stated that "the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team.”
• That Trump campaign staffer Carter Page had come up with the idea for the hack.
• That Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, had made "deniable cash payments" to the hackers in an effort to "to cover up all traces of the hacking operation"        

Efforts to Provide the Dossier Allegations to Various Federal Agencies

Having completed his Dossier, Steele began the effort to get it into the hands of the US Government. Steele met with Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS who had hired him, to tell him what he planned to do; Steele had decided this information needed to reach the FBI. Steele believed the information represented a national security threat, and that since the hack of the DNC by Russia and Trump indicated that a crime had been committed, this information needed to be evaluated by FBI. He made several different attempts to pass the report along to them, all to different people and at different points in time. The first person who Steele went to was FBI Agent Michael Gaeta, whom he had worked with in the past on an unrelated case. Steele told Gaeta he had information concerning the 2016 Presidential election that was extremely sensitive in nature, so sensitive, in fact, that it could only be delivered in person. Gaeta needed to ask for permission from Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in order to meet with Steele. Gaeta had little issue getting approval; Nuland agreed to the meeting with Steele and shortly on July 5th Gaeta flew to London. Gaeta met with Steele and was able to learn exactly it was that Steele had been so eager to tell him about. Steele provided Gaeta with copies of his memos that made up his Dossier, and after going over the information they contained, asked ask him take them back to Washington. Upon arriving back in D.C., shortly Gaeta reportedly gave these memos to FBI agent Peter Stzrok.         

Steele was able to get his Dossier information to another member of federal government, , this time choosing to funnel his conclusions into the State Department by giving them to U.S Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan Winer. Winer was the State Department’s second highest ranking official at the time, reporting directly to the Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland. Steele described the situation to Winer exactly the same way he had described it to Gaeta a few months prior. Steele told Winer that he had unearthed concerning evidence showing an illicit conspiracy had been undertaken, carried out by the Trump Campaign with help from the Russian government, that was designed to influence the 2016 elections. Winer had met with Steele in person, conditions that Steel insisted upon, and together they had reviewed the content of his Dossier. Winer had then summarized the information in a two-page report and immediately passed it along to his boss Victoria Nuland, who was the Assistant Secretary of State at the time.

The DOJ, however, did not require Steele to reach out them after he had finished putting together his Dossier. This was because, as it turned out, they already knew everything he might have told him. Bruce Ohr, who served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General for the DOJ during this period, had been kept up to date with the progress of Steele’s Fusion GPS assignment, having been aware that he was contracted to look into Trump’s ties with Russia from a very early stage. Bruce Ohr was the second highest ranking official at the DOJ that reported directly to Attorney General Sally Yates. He also happened to be married to an employee working for Fusion GPS, and his wife, Nellie Ohr, was a member of the team that was helping Steele with his research into Trump campaign. Bruce Ohr held regular meetings Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele, keeping him up to date on Fusion GPS’s work, and he would then relay what he’d learned to the FBI. These meetings took place during the beginning phases of Steele’s investigation, during the time that Steele was working on the Dossier, and included a meeting just three days before the FBI investigation opened a counterintelligence investigation, which they named Crossfire Hurricane, that was created to look into allegations that the Trump’s campaign had illicit connections with the Russian government. The meetings also continued after the FBI had decided that Steel was not a reliable source, prohibiting Steele from providing any further information to the FBI.  

Christopher Steele also gave his information to the US Congress, meeting in person with somehow a US Senator had sent, on their behalf, to learn the exact nature of the allegations contained in the Dossier. Surprisingly, it was a Republican Senator who sent this person in their place to meet with Steele. In late November of 2016, now deceased former Arizona Republican Senator John McCain sent David Kramer, former State Department official and Senior Fellow at the McCain Institute, to meet with Steele. Kramer had known McCain from his days working in the State Department, and later through his role at McCain Institute. At a conference held shortly after Trump had won the 2016 election Kramer first spoken with McCain about rumors that the Dossier contained evidence there had been collusion with Russia. McCain sent Kramer to meet with Steel in London, where he was given copies of the Dossier. Kramer took a copy of the Dossier to McCain, a copy McCain then personally delivered FBI Director to James Comey. Kramer made Steele and Glenn Simpson aware the McCain had provided a copy to FBI Director Comey.

Kramer also met with several members of the press in an effort to see the Dossier allegations make it to the public. In the most egregious example, decisions he had made in a meeting with a reporter from Buzzfeed led directly to the publication of the contents of the Dossier by Buzzfeed January of 2017. Shortly beforehand, on December 29th of 2016, Kramer had invited a Buzzfeed reporter to an empty room in the McCain institute which had been closed to the public. He had laid out the pages of the dossier on a table for him to read, but did not seem remotely concerned with security; the reporter started pressuring Kramer to let him take pictures, explaining that it was easier for him to read that way. Kramer agreed, and the reporter complained that Kramer’s presence was making it difficult for him to read. Kramer, agreed to leave the reporter alone in the room with the Dossier for 20-30 minutes while he went to the bathroom. Several days later, Buzzfeed published pictures the reporter had taken that revealed the content of the Dossier. Kramer claims to have been by this development.

Trump Tower Meeting

        The next centerpiece of the Trump-Russian collusion allegation is an event that came to be known quite simply as “The Trump Tower Meeting.” This meeting became one of the most commonly cited examples of inappropriate contact between these two parties. Supporters of the theory that Trump had been involved in illegal schemes with Russia point to this incident, The Trump Tower meeting, as well documented and clear proof. The allegations are very simple to understand, they are as follows; on June 9th, 2016, around the same time that Steele was first hired to write his dossier, several high-level members of the Trump Campaign had met with shady Russian actors in order to obtain dirt about the Clinton Campaign. The whole situation was made to look even worse from the Trump team publicly changing their story several times afterwards. This made it look like they had something to hide and many people assumed they were lying to cover up collusion. Initially, the campaign admitted that there had been a meeting, but had claimed its purpose was to discuss issues regarding Russian adoptions and not to obtain dirt on Hillary. Eventually the email chain of the Trump campaign agreeing to the meeting surfaced, they showed unequivocally that the primary focus of the meeting had been to get dirt on Clinton. Unable to deny it any longer, the campaign admitted they’d set up the meeting hoping to obtain opposition research on Clinton. However, they insisted that it had all been perfectly legal, that this kind of thing happened all the time in politics, and that nothing had come of it anyway. According to them, the meeting was cut short when it became clear their guests had lied about having dirt on Hillary; the material that had been presented to them was uninteresting and not even connected to Hillary or her campaign.

It turned out that the meeting had originally been proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email that was sent to him by Rob Goldstone. Its contents read as follows…

“Good morning

Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.

What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?

I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.

Best

Rob Goldstone” (“Full Text of…”)

Some context; the author of the email, Rob Goldstone, was a well-known British publicist. He claimed he was sending the letter on behalf of one of his clients, a famous Azerbaijan-Russian Pop Star named Emin Agalarov. Emin Agalarov supposedly wanted to offer Trump damaging information about the Clinton campaign, information that he says came from high level officials within the Kremlin. The first member mentioned was the Crown prosecutor of Russia, essentially their version of the Attorney General. The second was Emin’s father Aras Agalarov, who was an influential Azerbaijan-Russian Oligarch. This effort was explicitly described as an example of the Russian government’s support for Trump. It seems like an unlikely cast of character to be reaching out to Trump and offering free dirt on his opponent, a Russian Pop Star, his Russian Oligarch father, a British publicist, and the Russian’s government’s top prosecutor. Although odd, most of the names would have at least been familiar to the Trump family. The foreign singing sensation, Emin Agalarov, along with his British publicist Goldman, had actually helped convince Trump to hold the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow several years prior. Emin’s father Aras Agalarov, helped Trump manage certain aspects of the event and its preparation. As a billionaire Oligarch Aras certainly had enough influence to ensure that everything went smoothly. He was powerfully connected in the Russian world, was reportedly close with the Crown prosecutor and had at least some degree of connections to Putin.      

 Trump Jr emailed Goldstone back to accept the offer and learned that Goldstone would send a Russian government attorney to bring the sensitive documents over to Trump Tower. Three members of the Trump campaign ultimately attended the meeting, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort. The Russian government lawyer that the campaign had been told to expect was Natalia Veselnitskaya. She arrived alongside a Russian-American lobbyist, Rinat Akhmetshin, who the media claimed had potential ties to Russian intelligence who may have been at the meeting as a spy. The remaining attendees were Rob Goldstone, the publicist who had first emailed to set up the meeting, Anatoli Samochornov, who served as the translator, and Ike Kaveladze, a Goergian-American businessman, who was said to have attended mainly for support. The lawyer Veseliniskay and her lobbyist associate, Akhmetshin, had were both high profile political lobbyists in Washington known for lobbying to have a 2014 law, the Magnitsky Act, repealed. Trump Jr. claims he wanted to see the damaging information and documents they said they had on Hillary. He had been hoping for something significant, but he claims he was dissapointed. Veselnitskaya produced research, research that had been carried out by Fusion GPS, that showed a paper trail of financial crimes had been committed by two individuals who, Veselnitskaya claimed, were strong supporters of Hillary Clinton and had donated to her campaign. Don Jr, and the other members of the Trump team, asked Velesinitskaya if the fraudulent money could be directly tied to the donations made to the Clinton, or even to Clinton in any way. She told them that no, she could not, and continually made attempts to change the subject to abolishing the Magnitsky Act, the same effort she had been pushing for years.

Although the Trump campaign claimed that it was a fruitless meeting and that it was shut down early, many doubts still remained. The Trump team had not been upfront about the situation at first, and this led to a wide feeling that there might be something they had been trying to hide. Why had the emails said that Russia was continuing ongoing efforts to help Trump? Why were high level members supposedly funneling dirt? Why were people associated with Russian intelligence in attendance? These questions and more were asked many times on the news, in congressional testimony, and around water cools in American offices. Many people felt that this had been a clear and blatant case of foreign collusion in order to illegally interfere in our elections. This is why it became one of the main examples supporting the idea of collusion, and why it is one of the centerpieces exhibits we need to consider.

(mention how crossfire started but supposedly not bc of dossier)

George Papadopoulos and Joseph Misfud

Despite denying that they relied on the Steele Dossier to make this decision, something the FBI had learned about Trump’s potential connections to Russia prompted them to open an official counterintelligence investigation into the Trump Campaign, the name of which was Crossfire Hurricane. The case was officially opened on July 31st of 2016. The FBI maintains that the official reason for opening Crossfire Hurricane did not rely on the Steele Dossier, but instead points to genesis being something they had learned from a source with a “friendly foreign government.” This source told them that a Trump foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, had admitted to knowledge that Russia was in possession of damaging material related to Hillary Clinton prior to the release of the DNC email leaks. Papadopoulos supposedly learned this information from a Russian agent whom he had met several times, Joseph Mifsud. This contact had occurred while Papadopoulos was in London working for the Trump campaign as a foreign policy advisor. Papadopoulos had been introduced to Mifsud in March of 2016 and Mifsud, it was said, wasted no time before telling Papadopoulos all about his extensive connections with various high-level contacts in the Russian government. Mifsud had even offered to help him arrange meetings between these influential Russians and members of the Trump campaign. It was not until a subsequent meeting, one that took place a few months later in April of 2016, that Mifsud allegedly shared the incriminating information with Papadopoulos; Misfud claimed to have recently taken a trip to Russia where he met with several high-ranking Russian officials. These officials told him that Russia had recently obtained damaging material related to Hillary Clinton.  

A short time later in May of 2016, Papadopoulos received an out of the blue invitation to meet with an Australian diplomat in England, Andrew Downer. He had only briefly met Downer once before, but given Downer was the High Commissioner to the United Kingdom at the time, a title that was reserved for the highest-ranking Australian diplomat in the UK, Papadopoulos accepted. Papadopoulos joined Downer for an evening meeting at a London wine bar. It was at this meeting that at some point, according to Downer, Papadopoulos told him that the Russians had dirt on Clinton. Downer’s statement has been used to suggest the Trump campaign had prior knowledge of the Russian plan to leak the DNC emails through WikiLeaks. Officially, it was not until two months later that Downer decided to convey this information to the US government. This is the even that the FBI had given as it’s initial reason for opening the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.

Interestingly, several months later Papadopoulos received another unsolicited email invitation. This time it had come from Stephan Halper, a foreign policy expert and professor at the University of Cambridge, whom Papadopoulos had never met or spoken to before receiving this invitation. Halper asked him to fly to London in order to meet with him, Halper wanted to discuss world affair and was considering paying Papadopoulos to write a policy paper. Halper also asked, out of the blue, if Papadopoulos knew anything about the emails that Russia were said to be had. Papadopoulos denied any knowledge.

On Papadopoulos’s visit to Halper in London while the two men were out to for a meal, Halper again asked whether Papadopoulos was aware of any information indicating that the Russians were possession of stolen Clinton emails. Papadopoulos again denied knowing anything about this. While on the trip, Papadopoulos was also introduced to a woman that Halper claimed was his assistant. Her name was Azra Turk, and she had reportedly flirted with Papadopoulos fairly heavily during the trip, as well as afterwards in contacts she continued with him via email.  

     As part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation a FISA warrant was issued on Carter Page that allowed the FBI to surveille the Trump Campaign to look for Russian influence. The FISA court is the Foreign I Surveillance Act, and is designed to allow for surveillance of those suspected of illegally working with a foreign government. The FBI had renewed the warrant 3 different times, prolonging their access to the campaign. It is widely believed that the dossier was used as a basis to obtain these warrants.

The 2016 ICA

In January of 2017, after Trump had won the election but before he was sworn in, a report was issued by the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence designed to be an assessment by the various intelligence agencies over the Russian Governments interference 2016 US Presidential elections. This report is often referred to as the 2016 ICA, or Intelligence Community Assessment. Two of their most significant claims were as follows… 

• That the widespread Russian influence campaign was conducted upon the expressed direction of Vladimir Putin. It was done with intent help Donald Trump win the election, while at the same time damage the chances of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. The CIA and FBI stated that the had a "high confidence" that this claim was true. The NSA reportedly had "moderate confidence."
• That the Russian GRU, their military intelligence service, was responsible for compromising the servers of Democratic National Committee (DNC) and used the person of Guccifer 2.0 to facilitate their release through Wikileaks. The three agencies claimed they had a  "high confidence" that this was true.

James Comey is fired and the Special Counsel is formed

        On May 9th of 2019, Donald Trump ordered the then FBI Director, James Comey, to be terminated effective immediately. This was immediately seen as an attempt by Trump to end the investigation into Russian Collusion that the FBI was undertaking. The New York Times described the situation in the following way.

“The stunning development in Mr. Trump’s presidency raised the specter of political interference by a sitting president into an existing investigation by the nation’s leading law enforcement agency.

It immediately ignited Democratic calls for a special counsel to lead the Russia inquiry.” (Shear)

The stated reason for his dismissal was that he had shown an inability to lead the FBI objectively by how he had handled an unrelated case over Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure server to send and receive classified emails. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein both recommended that Comey be fired. This reasoning did little to quell the accusations of political interference and calls for the appointment of a Special Counsel.

The calls for a Special Counsel were quickly answered. On May 17th 2017, just 8 days after having recommended James Comey’s termination to President Trump, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed the former FBI Director, Robert Mueller, as head of a Special Counsel investigation. The Special Counsel was tasked with taking over the FBI investigation into Russian interreference and Mueller would be responsible for forming and directing the team that would serve as an independent prosecution. The Special Counsel dominated the news cycle for well over two years. It consisted of 19 lawyers who interviewed 42 people and spent over 32 million dollars. They issued 34 indictments, 6 of whom were associated with the Trump Campaign, 2 who were not affiliated, and 26 who were Russian. None of the 6 Trump associates were indicted for colluding with the Russian government, but mainly were charged with unrelated crimes or process crimes such as lying to investigators. George Papadopoulos was charged with obstruction and making false statements about his contact with Misfud. Trump’s incoming Director of National Intelligence pled guilty to charges brought by the Special Counsel that he had "willfully and knowingly” made false statements to the FBI about contact he had with the Russian Ambassador Kislyak before Trump had taken office. Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, was charged with things unrelated to Russian collusion, including campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. Paul Manafort pled guilty to unrelated tax and bank fraud, and later had his plea revoked for lying to investigator’s in their Russian investigation.

Most importantly for our purposes, the Special Counsel stuck to the story that Russia had been behind the hacking of the DNC. They indicted 12 Russians for the leaking and release of the DNC emails, Russians whom they claimed had been members of the GRU. The Special Counsel claimed these Russians were military officials tasked with carrying out the alleged crime. They named two organizations, Concord Management and the Internet Research Agency, as having carried out the hack and an influence campaign respectively. They were alleged to have done this as part of a widespread interference campaign into the 2016 elections conducted by the Russian government. The IRA was said to have operated a “troll farm” that published pro Trump material, and notably, were accused of doing so on the instructions of the Russian government.

The only other charges relating the DNC email leaks were brought the against Trump campaign advisor and longtime rightwing political operator Roger Stone. Stone was never charged with anything directly related to the leak but was instead charged with seven process crimes that he was said to have committed during the investigation.  Stone was charged with one count of witness tampering, one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements (at least one of them had to do with statements he had made to Congress). He was accused of lying about his communications with Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0, whom Mueller alleged had carried out the DNC hacking operation. ABC points out, however, that he was not alleged to have colluded or of having foreknowledge of the leaks, only with crimes he supposedly made to hide his presumably legal yet unsavory political conduct. They wrote that…

• Mueller's indictment stops short of accusing Trump, or anyone in his campaign, of colluding with the Russians or of having foreknowledge of the content of stolen documents prior to publication. (Dukakis)

In fact, as ABC points out, despite all of there charges the Special Counsel themselves admit that they found no evidence that anyone inside of Trump’s campaign, or any American at all, had helped Russia with their supposed interference activities. In their own words the Special Counsel concluded the following…

"Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities"

(Mueller Report, Vol. I, p. 173)

This statement was written in the Mueller Report, a report that was released after the conclusion of the Special Counsel designed to summarize the steps that had taken in their investigation and also their findings.

        However, as a result of these 3 years of various investigations and official declarations that Russia had been behind the hacks, this has become the widely held belief of most Americans. Most people view this story as unquestionably true; Russia was behind the DNC email leaks and that’s that. It is the central premise that holds the wider idea of Russian interference together. It is the one activity that those pushing the Russian collusion narrative can point to that shows Russia really did have a hand in the elections. Though they made other supposed attempts, most of them were questionable and have been debunked, such as the accusations against Carter Page or Michael Cohen. Yet one example supposedly remains, the example the started it all in the first place, the accusation that Russia was behind the 2016 DNC email leak.

Chapter 2 – The Official Story (Starts to Crumble)

        For many the official story behind the Russian interference narrative, particularly when it comes to the DNC hack, is all they know. They have been told that to question this narrative is irresponsible, an act of irresponsible speculation that should be relegated to the realm of conspiracy theorists and nutjobs. So why is that so many people never quite bought into it and even question it to this day? One big reason is that many Americans, myself included, could never quite forget about that young DNC data analyst who they found murdered on the streets just before the emails were published. Seth Rich’s murder stuck in our minds; this analyst was murdered with suspect timing in a supposed robbery gone wrong yet had nothing was missing from his person after the incident. That it occurred on July 11th, just 10 days before Wikileaks released their massive leak of emails from the DNC (where Seth worked) that were clearly devastating to the organization. Given that these leaks had been so damaging to the DNC many believed it wasn’t a stretch to think that maybe these two events were related. Keep in mind what the leaks caused, four senior leadership positions ended up resigning, massive internal strife broke out among their own voting base because the treatment they showed towards Bernie Sanders, and the embarrassing connections to the media helped increase an already growing distrust of the mainstream media among a huge portion of the country. If the DNC thought they somehow had a chance to prevent the leaks they certainly would have had the motivation for doing so. They did not, and as a result the internet buzzed with theories, people dug through the emails for clues, and even some mainstream news networks were covering the story with journalistic integrity (at first). The DNC knew that people would begin to tie Seth’s murder to these leaks and that, fairly or unfairly, they would be suspected of having a hand in it. If they wanted to stop this speculation the DNC needed a scapegoat, and they needed it fast. Overtime it became obvious, as more and more information came out, that that scapegoat was Russia, and that the entire process used to push that narrative forward was illegitimate and politically motivated.

Issues with Crowdstrike

Assuming for a second that Seth’s murder had something to do with the leaks, then the DNC would have been faced with a massive problem; any examination of the forensic metadata would surely show someone had accessed the data internally. They might prove that the files were transferred locally to a flash drive (or some sort of hard drive), that Seth’s employee ID had been used to gain access, or that the transfer speeds matched a local leak and not an internet enabled transfer. This information at the very least would certainly have led to some uncomfortable questions about who had made that transfer and at worst directly fingered Seth Rich. The actions the DNC took in response to the security breach seem to indicate that they might have had something to hide. We know the DNC made the decision to hire Crowdstrike, a private cybersecurity technology company based in Sunnyvale, California, instead of allowing the federal government access. It raised eyebrows when Crowdstrike was the only organization who had allowed to personally analyze the DNC servers. It was Crowdstrike who eventually released the report that blamed the leaks on a Russian backed external hack, not the FBI or the NSA. Despite being an interesting choice to lead the investigation into the leak, Crowdstrike was able to provide what appeared to be credible evidence that there had been intrusions of the DNC servers that could be traced back to Russian IP addresses. However, their report was certainly not the unambiguous proof that is has been made out to be. I will go in depth into the conclusions of Crowdstirke in a later chapter, but for now let’s just say that their conclusions have been called into serious question by many different people.

The initial impression, the one that caused eyebrows to raise, was that the DNC’s behavior seemed off. Almost everyone could see that their response was unusual. While some media figures described it as merely unconventional, harsher critics claimed their behavior was overtly suspicious and even indicative of a cover up. I tended to agree more with the latter. If, at this point in time, the DNC had been acting in good faith and had genuinely suspected that foreign hackers just infiltrated and stole large amounts of their data they sure did not act like it. The logical and practical course of action in this scenario would have been to have the FBI or NSA step in to help. The federal government would have had the tools and know how needed to perform a thorough forensic analysis of the actual physical evidence. From this they would have been able to identify the true culprit with a high degree of certainty (and with trust from the public). For a DNC acting in good faith this would have been the obvious course of action. The wight of a government agencies official conclusion that there had been an external hack by a foreign nation would not only have helped squash any speculation about Seth Rich’s possible involvement, but it would also have helped ensure that the culprits would face some sort of legal accountability. The federal government would have also been able to ensure containment of the breach, they would have been able to make sure nothing else had been taken or accessed by these foreign hackers and would have had the power stop their release if any had been. After all, if a foreign adversary had breached the DNC it would have presented a tremendous blackmail or coercion risk related to several high-level figures within the U.S Political leadership. If the DNC’s real goal had been to figure out exactly what happened with highest degree of confidence possible, and to contain the damage as best as they possibly could, they would have wanted the best of the best responding to the situation and doing the analysis on the servers. However, instead of seeking the best of the best for this type of thing from the NSA or the FBI, they picked the private company Crowdstrike.  

We know that the DNC did not decide upon this obvious and responsible course of action. We know that they instead hired a third-party private company to do the analysis. Now, even so, surely the FBI and NSA were at least able to replicate Crowdstrike’s work afterwards? Surely, they were given a chance to physically analyze the servers eventually, if not right away. Afterall, we know that the FBI, NSA, and CIA have repeated Crowdstrike’s claims and expressed confidence in their accuracy, so they must have independently verified the servers themselves. They would have had to, the conclusions publicly blamed a hostile foreign power, one who is also the second largest nuclear power in the world, of being behind an intention act of aggression against our political system. Given that there would undoubtedly be serious foreign policy ramifications behind such a declaration, there is just no way it would have been allowed to happen without first-hand verification. It would be grossly reckless and inappropriate to make such a claim based off someone else’s analysis, especially if that someone else was a private corporation who was being paid by the DNC themselves. If you are still holding out hope that any of this was the case, I am afraid you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Again, in another utterly inexplicable course of action, the FBI and NSA never actually physically examined the DNC servers themselves. (2) Instead, they relied purely on the privately funded report from Crowdstrike as a basis to make their repeated proclamation that Russia was responsible for the hacks.

It turns out that in fact it was much worse than simply trusting the results that Crowdstrike provided initially. The FBI not only relied on the word of a privately paid, third part non-governmental company, but the copy of the report they received from them was a redacted version of the report This means that Crowdstrike blacked out some of their conclusions, hiding them from even the federal government.. That is right, the government accepted a redacted analysis of the servers in place of actually taking a look themselves. (1) It doesn’t take a lawyer to point out that Crowdstrike had an immense conflict of interest in this scenario, after all they were paid to find what the DNC wanted them to find. There is also no expectation that they remain politically neutral or transparent with their process and record keeping. There is no inspector general that can review Crowdstrike to make sure the process was done in good faith and there are no FOIA requests can be granted to ensure everything was done with integrity. Both the extraordinarily bizarre way in which this whole case was handled, and the obvious issues Crowdstrike has with credibility and impartiality, should lead to any fair and independent observer to decide that their conclusions can simply not be relied upon. It was clear that their report was and remains wholly inadequate, that it would irresponsible and disingenuous to use report as a basis for making any sort of definitive claims. Similarly, it would be unethical to use the reports or the conclusions therein as a pretext for any sort of legal action against any party. Yet we saw our intelligence agencies proceed to do just that, seemingly seeing nothing suspicious about the circumstances.

The Steele Dossier Falls Apart

The other key source of information used to make the claim that Russia was behind the email hacks, outside of Crowdstrike, came from Fusion GPS in the form of the Steele Dossier. Now, recall that this was not independent corroboration, but instead information that arose from the same source. Christopher Steele, the author of the Steele Dossier, was told by his boss, Glenn Simpson, to look for evidence that pointed towards Russia being behind the leaks. Simpson had been told that this was the case by someone at the DNC, who was of course basing this on Crwodstrike’s work. The Steele Dossier was also funded by the same source as the Crowdstrike report, the law firm Perkins Coie. What are the odds that Perkins Coie, a law firm working on behalf of the DNC, had hired both groups, Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS (and by extension Steele) that came up with the idea that Russia had hacked the DNC? The public later learned that the Steele Dossier was complete and utter garbage. It was revealed that none of the information was true when the Special Counsel found zero collusion, but it gets worse than that. It wasn’t only not true, it was based on completely unreliable gossip described by it’s source as “bar talk.” Real Clear Investigations described it in their article “Meet the Steele Dossier’s ‘Primary Sub source’; Fabulist Russian from Democrat Think Tank whose Boozy Past FBI Ignored,”

“The mysterious “Primary Subsource” that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is a former Brookings Institution analyst -- Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele, according to congressional sources and records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Agents continued to use the dossier as grounds to investigate President Trump and put his advisers under counter-espionage surveillance.” (Sperry)

They go on to explain that not only was the source of questionable reliability, but that he did not even stand by the allegations Steele attributed to him.  

“A newly declassified FBI summary of the FBI-Danchenko meeting reveals agents learned that key allegations in the dossier, which claimed Trump engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin against Clinton, were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia.” (Sperry)

Of particular note was Steele’s reasoning for claiming that Carter Page had coordinated the Russian hack on the DNC.

“Danchenko told the FBI he figured out later that the call-in tipster, who he said did not identify himself, was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-born realtor in New York. In the dossier, Steele labeled this source “an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump,” and attributed Trump-Russia conspiracy revelations to him that the FBI relied on to support probable cause in all four FISA applications for warrants to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page -- including the Mueller-debunked myth that he and the campaign were involved in “the DNC email hacking operation.” (Sperry)

Danchenko explained to agents the call came after he solicited Millian by email in late July 2016 for information for his assignment from Steele. Millian told RCI that though he did receive an email from Danchenko on July 21, he ignored the message and never called him.

“There was not any verbal communications with him,” he insisted. “I’m positive, 100%, nothing what is claimed in whatever call they invented I could have said.”” (Sperry)

This proves that the Steele Dossier’s assertion that Russia had been behind the hack was unfounded. It also raises the question, if not Russia, then who? Further describing how the information in the Steele Dossier came to be...

“Desperate for leads, he turned (Danchenko) to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists, drinking buddies (including one who’d been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI’s January 2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false “rumor and speculation” — which Steele, in turn, further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as “intelligence.” (Sperry)

Instead of closing its case against Trump, however, the FBI continued to rely on the information Danchenko dictated to Steele for the dossier, even swearing to a secret court that it was credible enough to renew wiretaps for another nine months.”

This, combined with the end result of the Mueller investigation, prove that Steele’s information was completely false and never should have been taken seriously. Despite this, the combined “evidence” of the Steele Dossier and the Crowdstrike report were used to claim, in the 2016 ICA, that the Intelligence Community unanimously knew that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and that they had been behind the hacking of the DNC and the release of their emails to Wikileaks. This was also the evidence used to open a counterintelligence investigation Crossfire Hurricane against Trump, used to obtain surveillance warrants on a Presidential campaign and later a sitting President, used to appoint a Special Counsel, and that overall led to the creation of the official story.

Issues with How They Pushed the Dossier into the Government

        We know that the efforts Steele undertook to feed the dossier into the U.S intelligence community where suspect and unethical, as well as often potentially illegal. The most egregious example of this is perhaps the married couple of Bruce Ohr, the number two official at the DOJ, and his wife Nellie Ohr, who worked on Steele’s team. As we mentioned, Ohr was the go between for the FBI and Steele, feeding the information he learned back to them throughout the course of Steele’s investigation. As Dan Bongino puts it in his book Spygate…

“Steele also had an “in” to the DOJ through Bruce and Nellie Ohr, a married couple. Nellie worked with Fusion on the dossier, while Bruce was employed at the DOJ. Their relationship was not disclosed when the dossier was presented as evidence to surveil Carter Page. Nellie worked with Fusion since 2015, which makes it possible she was one of the FBI contractors illegally mining NSA databases for information on Republican presidential candidates. When Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel would begin in 2017, Bruce kept Mueller’s right-hand-man Andrew Weissman “in the loop” regarding his continued contact with Steele.” (Bongino)

        FBI agent Gaeta, the first person Steele shared his dossier with, admitted that he passed the information along to Peter Stzrok, lead FBI who would later head up the official investigation into Trump, Crossfire Hurricane. He also met with David Kramer, who was acting as a representative of John McCain, a U.S Senator. McCain passed the dossier along to the intelligence community by giving it directly to Comey. It was no secret McCain had a bone to pick with Trump, Trump had recently criticized him for being captured during his time serving in the military and had said that he was “not a war hero.”  Kramer was also responsible for the dossier going public, laughably allowing the Buzzfeed reporter to take pictures of his so that he could “read it easier,” and even left him alone with the documents for half an hour, in which he claims he was going to the bathroom, because the reporter told him it was hard to read with him in the room. Either Kramer is the easiest person in the world to fool, or he wanted the dossier to go public.

        It also came out that Steele met with Christine Kavalc, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at the State Department, on October 11, 2016, just ten days before the first FISA warrant was signed to allow the FBI to spy on the Trump Campaign. In the John Solomon article titled “Steele's Stunning Pre-FISA Confession: Informant Needed to Air Trump Dirt before Election,” we learn that Steele told Kavalac he was motivated by political interests and also that he had a deadline to get his information to the right people. What was that deadline? According to Solomon’s reporting, it was the 2016 election on November 3rd.

“If ever there were an admission that taints the FBI’s secret warrant to surveil Donald Trump’s campaign, it sat buried for more than 2 1/2 years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.” (Solomon)

Issues with Trump Tower Meeting

        It seems that the DNC may have also had a hand in setting up the Trump Tower meeting. Remember that the other organization that Perkins Coie hired outside of Crowdstirke was an opposition research firm named Fusion GPS. Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, ran the anti-Trump operation for Fusion GPS. To put it simply, Simpson’s fingerprints are all over the Trump Tower meeting. Most significantly, he met with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya directly before the meeting, and again directly after. In a Real Clear Investigations report titled “The Trump Tower Meeting Looks Increasingly like a Set Up by Russian and Clinton Operatives,” Lee Smith writes…

“The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between high-ranking members of the Republican presidential campaign staff and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties remains the cornerstone of claims that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election.

A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that the meeting may have been a setup -- part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials. This view, that the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it, is supported by two disparate lines of evidence pulled together for the first time here: newly released records and a pattern of efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia.“ (Smith)

        The first line of evidence they go over is the relationship between Bruce Ohr at the DOJ, his wife Nellie at Fusion GPS on the anti-Trump team, and Fusion GPS’s operatives Steel and Simpson, a connection we have already covered. The second, however, points to Fusion’s direct involvement in setting up the Trump Tower meeting. They reveal that Simpson had worked with Veselnitskaya for several years before the meeting, and that shockingly, he had eaten dinner with her the night before the Trump Tower meeting, and again the night after. It was also revealed that the “dirt” Veselnitskaya presented was opposition research that Fusion GPS itself had written up. As Real Clear puts it..

“In fact, the Russian lawyer at the center of the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was his client.

She has publicly stated that she used talking points developed by Simpson for the Russian government in that discussion. Kremlin officials also posted the allegations on the Prosecutor General’s website, and shared them with visiting U.S. congressional delegations.

In addition, Simpson has testified that he had dinner with Veselnitskaya the night before the meeting and the night after.” (Smith)

The other “Russians” that attended seem to have had a hand in crafting the Steele Dossier’s allegations as well. Aras Agalarov, the Oligarch whom supposedly supplied the dirt alongside Russian’s Crown Prosecutor, is likely the source of Steele’s ludicrous allegation that Trump had Russian prostitutes urinate on a bed that Obama had slept in. Recall that this allegation supposedly happened when Trump was in Moscow saying at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, an arrangement that had been set up by Aras Agalarov. Dan Bongino writes that ..

“Trump was in Russia in 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant after billionaire Aras Agalarov paid Trump to host it in Moscow that year. The timeframe for the golden showers incident to have occurred would’ve been slim because in an interview with The Washington Post, Agalarov’s publicist Rob Goldstone said he was with Trump for 31 out of the 36 hours he was in Moscow. Trump landed in Moscow at 3pm on a Friday and left at around 3am on Sunday morning.” (Bongino)

Real Clear also insinuated that Rinat Akhmetshin, the other lobbyist attendee at the meeting, had been a source for the Steele Dossier.

“Accompanying Veselnitskaya to the meeting was Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who had served in the Soviet Union’s military counterintelligence service. His role remains unclear, but evidence suggests he may have been the source Simpson was alluding to in December 2016 when Ohr recorded that Simpson told him, “Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.”” (Smith)

        So, we have a situation where the Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS co-founder Glen Simpson is meeting with the supposed Russian lawyer, that lawyer used Fusion GPS research to try to pass off as “dirt on Clinton,” and two of the men accompanying her where likely sources behind some of the Steele Dossier’s most outlandish claims. It’s strange just how convenient this all is, or perhaps it’s not strange at all. Perhaps it was a setup, paid for by the DNC, and carried out by Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS. That is exactly what it was according to a congressional investigator the Real Clear spoke with. They wrote…

“Trump Jr. cut the appointment with Veselnitskaya short. But if this were a sting operation, engineered by Simpson, with likely assistance from Justice Department officials he is now known to have been in regular contact with, the damage had already been done. “The purpose of the meeting,” one congressional investigator told RCI, “was to substantiate the Clinton-funded dossier alleging that Trump was taking dirt on his rivals from the Russians.”” (Smith)

        Further debunking the idea that anything illicit took place, we can look no further than the FBI’s own notes covering their interview with the translator present at the meeting, Anatoli Samochornov. He told the FBI that there was nothing nefarious about the meeting, that Clinton was hardly mentioned, and that it ended early because the Trump team was so disinterested and unimpressed with what Veselnitskaya had to say. Another Real Clear Investigations piece covered this interview, titled “Buried from the Trump Tower Meeting – Translator Telling FBI ‘No Collusion’” They state that…

“Just days after news of the infamous Trump Tower meeting drew the attention of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, the translator present told the FBI there was no talk of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, according to recently released documents.”

“...the meeting didn't live up to the billing, judging from what the translator told the FBI. Bureau notes show he told agents, “There was no discussion of the 2016 United States presidential election or Collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.” The agent notes also state, “There was no smoking gun according to Samochornov. There was not a discussion about ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. Samochornov did not think Hillary Clinton was mentioned by name.”  

““Samochornov told the interviewing agents that he would have contacted the FBI if he thought the meeting was nefarious,” according to the 302.” (Hemmingway)

Despite the suspect relationships he had with the main players, the fact that he supplied the so called “dirt,” the fact that the translator had debunked the idea that anything nefarious had taken place, and the that it is perfectly legal to seek out opposition research on political opponents (Glenn Simpson did this for a living), Simpson used this to push an example of “collusion” when he was called to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017. The following is an exchange between Simpson and Chief Oversight Counsel for Senator Dianne Feinstein, Heather Sawyer.

Sawyer: “… So this particular memo that we've been talking about, this first one doesn't specifically mention, as far as I can see, any efforts to interfere by Russia. It does talk about potential -- as it's called in here, a dossier of compromising material on Hillary Clinton. Did you take any steps to verify whether that dossier of compromising material existed on Hillary Clinton?”

Simpson: I will answer that, but can I just back you up a little bit I think your observation that it doesn't mention anything about interfering I wouldn't agree with.

Sawyer: Okay.

Simpson: I mean, one of the key lines here in the second paragraph says "However, he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his democratic and other political rivals." So the issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as I understand it, is that the Trump people were eager to accept intelligence from a foreign government about their political rivals and that is, you know, I would say, a form of interference. If you're getting help from a foreign government and your help is intelligence, then the foreign government's interfering. I think that also -- of course, in retrospect we now know this was pretty right on target in terms on what it says.” (Simpson Interview, HSCI)

On the surface it is hard to disagree with Simpson. The Trump Campaign received an offer from suspect sources, claiming to be “very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump” In fact, it seems like this was almost too “on target.” This offer was unsolicited and was sent on behalf of the same group of people who later helped craft the Steele Dossier. These people included Simpson himself, who provided the “dirt” based from prior research Fusion GPS had conducted and met with the Russian lawyer, Veselnitskaya, the day before and the day after the meeting. This Russian lawyer, Veselnitskaya, had also been a longtime client of Simpson. The list included Aras and Emin Agalarov, who turned out to be the two likely sources of the ridiculous golden shower story featured in the Steel Dossier. It included Rinat Akhmetshin, whom it appears also helped feed lies about Trump to steal. With this cast of characters behind the meeting of course it appeared to be “right on target” with what the Dossier would end up alleging. The totality of the evidence points to one unmistakable conclusion; the Trump Tower Meeting, one of the key pieces of evidence supporting the collusion narrative, was an intentional set up.

        This set up was carried out by a group that had been funded by the DNC, using the same law firm that they had used to hire Crowdstrike, Perkins Coie. Perkins Coie, and by extension the DNC itself, can now be directly tied to the three most pivotal pieces of evidence used to support the theory of Russian collusion; the Russian hack of the DNC, the allegations in the Steele Dossier, and the Trump Tower meeting.

Targeting of George Papadopoulos, and is Joseph Misfud a Western Asset?

        More trouble arises when we start to look at the “official” reason given by the FBI to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump; namely that George Papadopoulos had told a foreign diplomat that the Russian’s had Hillary’s emails before this became public knowledge. This allegation falls apart spectacularly with even the slightest amount of scrutiny. First, let’s take a look at how Papadopoulos first supposedly learned about Russia having “Hillary’s emails.” Recall that Papadopoulos received an unsolicited invitation to meet with a supposed Russian agent, Joseph Misfud, while he was working in London. In this April meeting, Misfud only told Papadopoulos that Russia had “damaging material on Hillary,” he did not mention emails or in any way tie this information to the DNC hacks. Misfud himself denies that he relied any specific knowledge about the emails and that he had no knowledge of this even before hand. ('Professor' Joe Mifsud..) There is also another huge problem with this story, it doesn’t appear that Misfud is a Russian agent at all, and in fact it’s become increasingly clear that he was instead acting as a western intelligence when he reached out the Trump campaign. A lawyer for Misfud, Stephan Roh, met with the Hill’s John Solomon and told him that his client, Misfud, was carrying out instructions that he had been given by western intelligence assets that were connected to the CIA. According to the Solomon…        

“Roh told me the information he is preparing to share with Durham’s team from his client will accentuate those concerns.

Mifsud was a “longtime cooperator of western intel” who was asked specifically by his contacts at Link University in Rome and the London Center of International Law Practice (LCILP) — two academic groups with ties to Western diplomacy and intelligence — to meet with Papadopoulos at a dinner in Rome in mid-March 2016, Roh told me.

A May 2019 letter from Nunes to U.S. intelligence officials corroborates some of Roh’s account, revealing photos showing that the FBI conducted training at Link in fall 2016 and that Mifsud and other Link officials met regularly with world leaders, including Boris Johnson, elected today as Britain’s new prime minister. 

A few days after the March dinner, Roh added, Mifsud received instructions from Link superiors to “put Papadopoulos in contact with Russians,” including a think tank figure named Ivan Timofeev and a woman he was instructed to identify to Papadopoulos as Vladimir Putin’s niece. 

Mifsud knew the woman was not the Russian president’s niece but, rather, a student who was involved with both the Link and LCILP campuses, and the professor believed there was an effort underway to determine whether Papadopoulos was an “agent provocateur” seeking foreign contacts, Roh said. 

The evidence, he told me, “clearly indicates that this was not only a surveillance op but a more sophisticated intel operation” in which Mifsud became involved.” (Solomon)

Misfud, it turns out, was not a Russian agent. Much like other “Russians” that attended the Trump tower meeting, it appears that they were instead western assets acting on behalf of western groups. Was this a set up just like the Trump Tower meeting was? It sure looks like it, considering that this operation continued when Alexander Downer, Australian diplomat, sent an unsolicited invitation to Papadopoulos (this is starting to become a trend). Papadopoulos testified to Congress that Downer had clearly been sent there to coerce Papadopoulos into telling him what Misfud had told him about the Russians having dirt on Clinton. From his congressional testimony he describes the strange meeting…

“One, I felt like Alexander Downer -- first, I felt the meeting was completely controlled. That he was sent to meet me by some entity or some organization, and that he was recorded my conversation with him. And what do I mean by recording my conversation? If I had my phone I would show you of how strange this character was acting. I sat down with him and he pulls his phone out and he starts holding it like this towards me.

And I told the special counsel this over a year ago. I'm sitting down within 5 or 6, 7 minutes of meeting this person, I'm talking and he goes like this to me, stone-faced, just holding his phone like this towards me. And I didn't know what to think except do I tell him Will you stop recording me, or, What are you doing?

Because it was just, it just left such an indelible memory of how this individual was acting that I never forgot it, and I felt that he was recording it and the meeting was controlled.” (Transcript of George Papadopoulos)

This sounds like Downer was fully aware that Misfud had been tasked with feeding Papadopoulos phony information on Russia, and that Downer had been sent in to “pull” this information from him so that it could be used against the Trump team. He also denied the allegation that he had told Halper that the Russians had any dirt on Hillary, telling the congressional committee the following…

“And I couldn't remember at the time that they were talking about Downer, but then they made it more specific. And I said, Yeah, I remember Downer. Do you remember telling him any information? And I said, No, to this day, I don't remember actually ever sharing that information with this person that I guess triggered this whole investigation. But like I said, I remember many other facets of that meeting.” (Transcript of George Papadopoulos)

While it seems likely Downer was acting on behalf of the intel community, there is no question that next shady figure to reach out to Papadopoulos. The FBI later admitted that Stefan Halper reached out to Papadopoulos on their instruction and tried to do the same thing, pull the information that had been fed to him by Misfud. He was asked on multiple occasions if he had any knowledge of the Russians having Hillary’s emails, and he denied these. It turns out that both Stefan Halper and his “assistant” Azra Turk, where FBI informants sent to spy on Papadopoulos. Fox News reported that Halper had also spied on two other Trump team members, Carter Page and Sam Clovis.

“The source, said to be a 73-year-old professor from University of Cambridge in the U.K., met with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in the summer of 2016, according to the reports. The informant also reportedly met with Trump co-chair Sam Clovis in August 2016.” (Gearty)

Papadopoulos was later arrested by the Special Counsel and charged with lying to them about his contacts with these agents. How he was arrested in the first place is an incredible example of malfeasance.  Papadopoulos was vacationing in Greece when a shady character approached him and have him 10,000$ to work on a political consulting project. Papadopoulos, finding this incredibly suspect, gave the money to who his lawyers the next day. When he arrived back in the U.S, to his surprise, he is arrested by FBI when he lands. They apparently where searching his bags looking for the 10,000$, an amount that is just past the legal threshold of how much money you can bring into the U.S legally. They arrested him anyway, without a warrant and with no justification of why. He describes the situation to Maria Bartiromo.

PAPADOPOULOS: This element you just raised is probably going to actually provide evidence that I was part of an entrapment operation by Mueller's team, not even the politicized FBI under Comey. In Summer 2017, I was reached out to once again by another person who wanted to do business with me. And I was on vacation with my then girlfriend now wife, in Greece, and he comes to me he says why don't you come to Israel with me and let's talk about working together. I go to Israel with him, and he drops $10,000 in my lap in a room, in Tel Aviv. I don't understand what is happening, I am very disturbed by the events. I fly to Athens the next day and give the money to my lawyers and this person tells me he doesn't want his money back, so immediately I thought there was something wrong.

BARTIROMO: Why did he give you the money, though, George? You accepted the money, what was money for?

PAPADOPOULOS: We were talking about working on some sort of political consulting venture, like a lot of people were reaching out to me after I left transition team, and once I saw cash, I was in a foreign country, I took it gave it to my lawyer because I thought there was something illegal about it. I get to Dulles Airport.

BARTIROMO: So you get on plane to go back to Washington, what happens when you land? Now, right now you gave the money to your lawyer, so you don't have the money, but perhaps they assumed you did keep the money, so you are on a plane you go to Dulles what happens when you land in Washington?

PAPADOPOULOS: Yeah, so as money, which is currently in Athens with my lawyer -- I actually want Congress, Barr, Horowitz, Huber to review the bills because I still have the bills and I think they are marked. I get to Dulles, I have FBI agents scrambling, they don't even know why they're arresting me, I have no arrest warrant waiting for me, I'm not told why I am being arrested. And later I find out from a report that came out a couple of days ago that Andrew Weissmann and Mueller's team was in touch with officials in Cyprus, I think the legal attache over there, to discuss Paul Manafort and myself, because I was actually in Cyprus over that summer.

So something the insidious was going on here.  I think these bills that are still in Athens right now must be examined by the investigators, because I think they are marked and they're going to go all the way back to DOJ, under the previous FBI under Comey, and even the Mueller team.

If the Mueller team is going around entrapping campaign associates and Trump associates, the way they did to me, I am sure it wasn't just me they did it to, and it is going to open up a massive can of worms and I think we need to get to the bottom of exactly, not only how did this story start, but why were they entrapping us moving forward.” (Hains)

        It was after this arrest that he was questioned and supposedly lied to the Special Counsel. He was charged with making false statements to the DBI about his contacts, a charge he contests, and spent two weeks in jail as result of the plea deal. With the release of all this information another key pillar propping up the Russian Collusion narrative crumbled. Papadopoulos had been set up, Misfud was acting on behalf of western intelligence, Downer and Halper had reached out to him on behalf of the US intelligence community, and he appears to have been entrapped by the FBI using 10,000$ they gave to him hoping he would bring the money back to the U.S. This did not prevent the FBI from using this series of events, most of which they’d help set up, as a pretext to further spy on the Trump Campaign, and to continue pushing the idea that they had somehow colluded with the Russian government. As bad as things look at this point for the intelligence community the official FBI investigation hasn’t even been opened yet, and as we will see, when it does things only got worse.  

Chapter 3 – The Official Story Continues Falling to Pieces

        Our examination of the Russian investigation’s origins has shown quite clearly that it was not a good faith exercise in true finding, but instead was a coordinated frame up and a political hit job. As we will soon see, things didn’t get better once the FBI took over and officially opened a counterintelligence operation on the Trump Team, in fact, things got much worse.    

Issues with Crossfire Hurricane

        There have been several inspector general reports into the conduct of the FBI while they investigated the Trump campaign and they helped show that it was a politically motivated hit job from the very beginning. The lead investigator of Crossfire Hurricane was an agent named Peter Strzok. In his “Abbreviated Timeline of Key Events Related to Crossfire Hurricane Investigation - Prepared for 12/18/19 Hearing with IG Michael Horowitz” the inspector general of the FBI provides an overall timeline of the investigation, citing issues that he found in order. I will be presenting portions of this to help show just how biased and tainted the whole process was, excerpts from his timeline will be underlined. Let’s start with the fact that the lead investigator Peter Strzok’s appointment was initially objected to by two lawyers at the FBI because he had been having an extramarital affair with FBI agent Lisa Page, and that the two of them had bypassed the FBI’s chain of command in the past and went straight to Andrew McCabe in the past. Horrowitz tells us that Andrew McCabe (Deputy Director of the FBI) himself made the decision to ignore these concerns and appointed Strzok to head up the investigation into Trump anyway.

• July 28-31, 2016 

- “Neither CD AD Priestap nor EAD Steinbach want Strzok to lead the investigation because of his personal relationship with L. Page and instances of Strzok-Page bypassing the chain of command to advise FBI Deputy Dir. Andrew McCabe.

 - “McCabe overrules decision to exclude Strzok.” 

(Horrowitz Timeline)

Why would McCabe purposefully ensure that Strzok was in charge of the FBI’s official investigation into the Trump campaign? Perhaps it had to do with his willingness to ignore the rules and work with directly with McCabe. We can see just how biased Stzrok was against Trup through text messages that were made public by the IG, text messages between Stzrok and his mistress Lisa Page.

• July 31, 2016: The same day the FBI opens the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump

• Strzok texts Page “And damn this feels momentous. Because this matters. The other one did, too, but that was to ensure we didn’t F something up. This matters because this MATTERS. So super glad to be on this voyage with you.”

• Aug. 6, 2016:

• Page texts Strzok: “And maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace (Trump).”

• Aug. 8, 2016:

• L. Page texts Strzok, “[Trump's] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” and Strzok replies, “No. No he's not. We'll stop it.”

• Aug. 15, 2016:  

•  Strzok texts L. Page: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy [McCabe]’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.  It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40....”

• Dec. 22, 2016:

• Page texts Strzok: “The election stuff makes me want to cry.” Strzok responds, “I know. Me too. And I don’t see it getting better…” Page responds: “As you said last night, I’m really scared for our country. And there’s practically no one I can talk to about it.”

• January 2017: The 2016 ICA is released.

(Horrowitz Timeline)

Issues with the 2016 ICA

Overtime information has come out showing that unconventional and suspect methods had been used to create the 2016 ICA that backed up the Russian collusion narrative. It now looks like the joint report was issued by the intelligence community in January of 2017 not to inform, but in an attempt to bolster the false claims found in the Steele Dossier and those that came from Crowdstrike. Real Clear Investigations revealed that the same Peter Stzrok, who sent these biased texts showing political motivation, and who had been appointed by McCabe despite the protestations of other FBI lawyers, helped create the ICA. They wrote…

“A source close to the House investigation said Brennan himself selected the CIA and FBI analysts who worked on the ICA, and that they included former FBI counterespionage chief Peter Strzok. “Strzok was the intermediary between Brennan and [former FBI Director James] Comey, and he was one of the authors of the ICA,” according to the source.” (Bongino 3)

Another issue with the ICA was the exclusion of evidence that went against the idea that Russia was responsible for the leaks. Real Clear Investigations interviewed Fred Fleitz, ex-CIA analyst, and wrote the following…

"Traditionally, controversial intelligence community assessments like this include dissenting views and the views of an outside review group,” said Fred Fleitz, who worked as a CIA analyst for 19 years and helped draft national intelligence estimates at Langley. "It also should have been thoroughly vetted with all relevant IC agencies,” he added. "Why were DHS and DIA excluded?”

Fleitz suggests that the Obama administration limited the number of players involved in the analysis to skew the results. He believes the process was “manipulated” to reach a “predetermined political conclusion” that the incoming Republican president was compromised by the Russians.

“I’ve never viewed the ICA as credible,” the CIA veteran added. (Sperry, 2)

This quote contains several disturbing pieces of information. Firstly, they document didn’t include exculpatory evidence like it traditionally had. Though the report mentioned in an annex entry that “the source (Steele) collected this information on behalf of private clients,” they did fail to mention that these private clients had been Trump’s opponent in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton and the DNC.  The State Department had been told that Steele had been motivated by an election deadline, showing clear political bias, by this point in time. They had also received transcripts of exculpatory statements Papadopoulos had made to an informant in which he told them that there had been no collusion. The fact that these key pieces of evidence where left out shows a clear desire to mislead and to make Trump look guilty of collusion.  

Rand Paul also spoke against the ICA, claiming that the Obama Administration’s intelligence communities had used it to push the lies of the Steele Dossier.

“My source tells me that the intelligence community, Obama's intelligence community Brennan, Clapper, Comey, they were frustrated because they had this Russian dossier but nobody believed it was real... they couldn't get anything out of it,”

“Finally they decided well what we have to do is attach this dossier, this fake dossier, to an intelligence report. So now Obama is officially seeing it and then also it's given to Trump at this point. But extraordinary power of these people and extraordinary corruption… they tried to bring down a sitting president.” (Garcia)

        This was exactly what the 2016 ICA was able to do. It gave the Dossier allegations an air of credibility, it went from “unverified and salacious” to “official U.S. intelligence” overnight, despite the fact that it hadn’t been corroborated or verified in any way, it had only been repeated inside an official looking report. This was all they needed, it gave the media the ammo they needed to push this even harder, and it gave the intelligence community a reasonable excuse for their actions they took against the Trump campaign or later against the Trump Presidency.      

• Jan, 2017:

• FBI interviews Steele’s primary sub-source for the first time, and reports:  

• Steele’s reporting was “misstated or exaggerated,” and some of the primary subsource’s information was based on “rumor and speculation”
• “he/she never expected Steele to put the Primary Sub-source’s statements in reports or present them as facts”  
• “he/she made it clear to Steele that he/she had no proof to support the statements from his/her sub-sources and that ‘it was just talk’”
• Information was “word of mouth and hearsay”; “conversations that [he/she] had with friends over beers”; statements made in ‘”jest.”

• Apr. 13, 2017:

• Strzok emails FBI colleagues: “I’m beginning to think the agency got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn’t shared it completely with us. Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some of the leaks.”

• May 19, 2017:

•  Strzok texts Page: “you and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”)

(Horrowitz Timeline)

*This quote is significant, it showed that Peter Strzok had caught on, he knew that there was nothing to the reports of Trump Russian collusion. Despite this the investigation continued.

• June 19, 2017:

• “FBI Attorney alters email to read that C. Page was not a source for another U.S. government agency”

(Horrowitz Timeline)

         The FBI agent described would be revealed as Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer would later work for Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel. This is particularly significant given the fact that Steele had blamed Page as the lead Trump associate responsible for working with Russia to leak the DNC emails. Here we see that Clinesmith was told by another agency that Page’s contact with Russian was done while he was acting as a source for the U.S Government. Instead of exonerating Page because of this knowledge, Clinesmith altered their email to make it say that Page “was not a source,” thereby allowing the investigation to continue. Klinesmith has since been indicted by the DOJ for altering this email.

        Lisa Page, Peter Stzrok, and Andrew McCabe were all fired (or resigned) for their part in the fraudulent investigation. McCabe was also recommended for potential prosecution by the DOJ inspector general

• Mar. 16, 2018: McCabe is fired.
• Apr. 19, 2018: Reports indicate DOJ OIG referred McCabe to federal prosecutors for lying. 
• May 4, 2018: L. Page resigns from the FBI.
• Aug. 10, 2018: Strzok is fired. 

(Horrowitz Timeline)

Issues with Special Counsel

Despite all of this information, including the unreliability of information in the Steele Dossier, a Special Counsel was appointed and spent almost two years looking into claims that were clearly untrue. Robert Mueller’s team even made a laughable attempt to tie the Russian government to the DNC hack. He indicted 12 Russians who he claimed where military officials, with the crime. He named two organizations, Concord Management and the Internet Research Agency, as being part of the Russian government. The IRA was shown to have operated a “troll farm” that published pro Trump material. As Politico put it,

“Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian military officials on Friday and accused them of hacking into two Democratic Party computer systems to sabotage the 2016 presidential election.” (Samuelsohn et al.)

Yet these charges quickly fell flat on their face. The Russian’s who were accused, and the larger organization they belonged to, Concord Management and Concord Consulting, sought a trial in order to fight these charges. In response to this move, instead of being forced to actually prove their allegations, the Mueller team simply dropped the prosecution. Another article by Politico describing the situation featured statements from the lawyer representing these Russians.

“A defense lawyer for the Russian company that may have surprised prosecutors by seeking a trial in the case, Eric Dubelier, said the prosecution suffered from "fundamental problems" from its outset.

“The purpose of this indictment was to make a political statement regarding the outcome of the 2016 election that was grossly overstated," said Dubelier, a partner with law firm Reed Smith.

"In preparing for trial we had every intention to prevail given the problems with the government’s allegations. The government’s evidence was completely devoid of any information that could establish that the defendants knew what they were doing was in violation of highly complex U.S. laws and regulations. This was a make-believe charge to fit the facts solely for political purposes," he added.” (Gerstein)

In response, instead of proving their case and backing up their allegations, they dropped the charges. The Huffington Post quotes their statement.

“Upon careful consideration of all of the circumstances, and particularly in light of recent events … the government has concluded that further proceedings as to Concord. ... promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation’s security,” prosecutors wrote in the motion. “The better course is to cease litigation. (Visser)

They were also ordered, by Federal Judge Dabney Friedrich, to stop claiming that the IRA had acted on behalf of the Russian government, as it was not supported by the facts. Keep in mind the IRA was accused of posting pro Trump images and content, not in the “hack” of the DNC. As website The Nation reported..

“The inference here is that the IRA was a part of the Russian government’s “sweeping and systematic” interference campaign. Yet Mueller’s team has been forced to admit in court that this was a false insinuation. Earlier this month, a federal judge rebuked Mueller and the Justice Department for suggesting that the troll farm’s social media activities “were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government.” US District Judge Dabney Friedrich noted that Mueller’s February 2018 indictment of the IRA “does not link the [IRA] to the Russian government” and alleges “only private conduct by private actors.” Jonathan Kravis, a senior prosecutor on the Mueller team, acknowledged that this is the case. “[T]he report itself does not state anywhere that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency activity,” Kravis told the court.” (Lawrence)

However you look at it, the supposed proof brought by Mueller that Russian actors within the Russian government had conducted the DNC hack, is completely unsubstantiated. In fact there is nothing to support even the basic premise that the Russian movement had conducted a pro-Trump influence campaign of any kind, let alone a widespread and sophisticated election interference campaign in coordination with Trump campaign.

        Where does that leave the indictment of Roger Stone, who was alleged to have lied about his dealing with Wikileaks? Stone was ultimately convicted, but not without tremendous controversy. Firstly, Stone’s trial was overseen by the same Judge who had revoked Paul Manafort’s plea deal that he had signed, agreeing with Special Counsel Prosecutors that he had lied to investigators in their Russian investigation, causing many to allege she might be biased. It also came out later that Stone’s Jury foreperson, Tameka Hart, had a obvious and public political bias. Hart had actually run for Congress, as a Democratic candidate, in 2002. She launched a primary bid for the House of Representatives, attempting to unseat Rep. Steve Cohen as the Representative for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. She was not only democrat leaning, she actively run for office on a Democratic ticket. This history of involvement with the Democrat party was not the only thing that came out about her partisan past and political leanings. Several tweets showed that she had a history of commenting against Trump and his associates, particularly focusing on the alleged case of Russian collusion.  CNBC reported on the revelations...

“One of Hart’s posts was made on Twitter on Nov. 15, the same day that she and other jurors voted to find Stone guilty in Washington, D.C., federal court.

That post shows two “heart” emojis and a two clenched fist emojis, with a link to a Facebook post that has since been deleted”

“A week before that, as Stone’s trial was underway, Hart wrote a Twitter post that mentioned the “standing ovation” that Trump received when he attended a University of Alabama football game, which the Crimson Tide lost to LSU.

“Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I’m just saying ...” Hart wrote.” (Mangan 2)

Hart had even commented on the predawn raid that was used to arrest Stone, apparently defending the excessive and unnecessary show of force. She posted the following just five days after his January 2019 arrest. Hart tweeted..

“Roger Stone has y’all talking about reviewing use of force guidelines,

Not Alton Sterling

Not Eric Gardner

Not Walter Scott

Not Keith Lamont Scott

Not Philando Castile

Not Terence Crutcher

Not Dontre Hamilton

……..

But Roger Stone!!! Think about that.”

The list of names were of black people who had been killed by police force and had each sparked allegations of racially motivated excessive force. She directly mentioned that she thought negatively of Stone in another tweet. CNBC reported..

“In one post, the foreperson shared an article about Stone, and herself wrote, “brought to you by the lock her up peanut brigade.”” ((Mangan 1)

That was not all, however, and many more examples of anti-Trump rhetoric were found. Here are some examples. 

In an effort to correct this issue, Stone requested that a new trial be set. It came out from Stone’s lawyers that Hart had been asked, during jury selection, if she had ever posted anything on social media about Roger Stone. On a questionnaire given to her and other members of the jury, Hart had answered this question by saying that she was “unsure” whether or not she had ever made such posts. She also denied that she had read news accounts about the trial while serving as Foreperson, and denied the she had ever deleted posts she made on social media. Given that she had retweeted an article about Stone’s arrest just days after it happened, she had clearly withheld information from the court when she answered the questionnaire by saying she wasn’t sure if she had ever done such a thing. Despite this, and despite the overwhelming evidence that she was biased and she had expressed an opinion over the merits of the case before it even began, the Judge dismissed Stone’s motion for a retiral. In her ruling Judge Jackson made the stunning declaration that…

"At bottom, the defense merely posits that if you do not like Donald Trump, you must not like Roger Stone, or if you are concerned about racism on the part of some of the President's supporters, then you must be applying that label to Roger Stone because he was a supporter, too,”  

"While the social media communications may suggest that the juror has strong opinions about certain people or issues, they do not reveal that she had an opinion about Roger Stone, which is the opinion that matters."

For many this decision was an outrageous example of an out of control Judiciary that was unfairly targeting Stone. It hard to reconcile Jackson’s ruling, that Hart had not expressed an opinion about stone, when she tweeted directly about him twice, taking a critical stance both times. She had implied that the extreme out of proportion response was justified, and had also claimed that Stone was a member of Trump’s “peanut brigade.” This is not even mentioning the countless examples where she had expressed a distain for Trump, and posted articles and comments that showed she believed Trump’s campaign was guilty of Russian collusion. Given that Stone was charged with lying about his supposed involvement in this collusion, it is hard to see how a judgment on one is not also a judgment on the other.  In response to this unfair treatment of Stone, and because he knew that there was no underlying crime for Stone to have lied about, Donald Trump officially commuted the remainder of Stone’s sentence on July 10th, 2020. He stated that the reason he did not pardon Stone was that so he would have a chance to fight the charges in court, and ultimately expose the unfair and corrupt process that he had been a victim of.

In an interview with Sean Hannity shortly after Stone received his pardon from President Trump, Stone explained this process. He went in to detail how he believed he had been unfairly targeted by malicious prosecutors.  

 Stone: “If you look at it very carefully its very clear what happened, and that is that Aaron Zelinsky, the corrupt prosecutor, dirtiest of the Mueller’s dirty cops other than Weissmann, shared the fruits of the surveillance into me with Adam Schiff so that he could fashion gotcha questions, most of them of no consequence. And after the se-up, which I appeared for voluntarily for the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff, in violation of house rules, shared the classified testimony with Mr. Zelinsky so Mr. Weissmann could fashion a very contorted and contrived indictment. Yet Today you have Mueller, and Schiff, and Rosenstein, back there saying “Stone was in cahoots with Russian intelligence!” This is nonsense, they’re all the way back to the Russia, Russia, Russia Lie”

Sean Hannity asked Stone if there had ever been any evidence presented that Stone, or anyone else, had assisted the supposed Russian election interference campaign. Stone replied…

“Here’s what there was, there was evidence that I had a twitter direct message exchange with Guccifer 2.0, a persona, but if you look at when this happened, it happened long after Wikileaks had published all their material - and if you look at the actual content of the exchange - it’s benign! There’s no collusion, there’s no collaboration. And thirdly, we don’t even know that Guccifer 2.0 even is a Russian asset, just because John Brennan says something is true - he said the Steele Dossier was real to - just because they assert something doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Here we see, yet again, that there was very little evidence to support the claims against Russia and zero evidence that anyone from the Trump team had been involved in Russia’s (alleged) efforts. The vast majority of what had been presented as proof against Russia came in the form of uncorroborated statements made by the leaders of the various intelligence agencies during the Obama Administration. Stone was not allowed to point this out in his legal defense. In fact, as Stone explains, his team of lawyers were expressly prohibited from using any defense that might have contradicted the official story. He explained to Hannity…  

“I could have proved in trial, using forensic evidence and expert testimony from fellows like Bill Binney, former NSA counter-intelligence expert Ray McGovern … that no one hacked the DNC. That there was no online hack of the DNC, the information, based on download times, was downloaded to a portable disk and taken out the back door. But I was not allowed to present that defense because Judge Jackson would not allow it.”

Why would Judge Amy Jackson have prevented Stone from making this obvious defense? After all, he had been charged with lying about contacts he had with Wikileak’s as well as with the supposed “Russian asset” the government claimed was behind the DNC email leaks. Why would he not be allowed defend himself by showing that this basic premise was untrue? A reasonable and just rationale behind this decision is hard to come up with. When we recall that this was the same judge that had seen no issue with the biased Jury Foreman Tamaka Hart leading the jury responsible for deciding Stone’s fate, it gets even harder to pretend this decision might have been reached by anything other than a corrupt intent. The most obvious potential motive would that there was a desire to protect the “Russian hack” theory from anything that might call it into question. Above all else this theory needed to survive, it had become the lynchpin of the Russian interference narrative, and without it the entire case falls apart. A retrial would have run the risk of this case being tried in a fair courtroom. If a new judge, for example, decided to allow Stone to present any defense he wanted to, his team might wind up proving that Russia didn’t hack the DNC after all. Perhaps this potential scenario crossed Judge Jackson’s mind when she offered the incredibly ludicrous justification for denying a retiral; that Foreperson Hart was still able to rule on the case in a fair and unbiased way despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. To do this she had to overlook the fact that Hart had once run as a Democratic candidate for Congress. She had to downplay the fact that Hart had spoken negatively about Trump and Stone online multiple times in the past and had even done so only five days after his arrest. Most egregious of all, perhaps, is that Jackson ignored evidence that showed Hart had reached a judgment about the merits of the case before the trial had even began. This was made clear from several tweets she had made that implied the Trump team was guilty of collusion. 

Unethical and suspect prosecution was also demonstrated in the trial of Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming Director of National Intelligence who had pled guilty to "willfully and knowingly” makin false statements to the FBI about contact he had with the Russian Ambassador Kislyak before Trump had taken office. It turns out that these charges had been trumped up and that Flynn had been pressured into pleading guilty through intimidation tactics. Flynn tried to retract his plea, but this was denied by Judge Emmett Sullivan. Upon review of the case the DOJ decided their had been insufficient basis to charge Flynn, and they announced they would be dropping the case. The Hill lays out the four main issues cited by the DOJ in the article, “Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it”

“First, Flynn’s statements to investigators were equivocal. That creates significant questions about whether inaccuracies in his description of the Kislyak discussions were honest failures of recollection, not lies. The interview happened about a month after the Kislyak communications. In the interim, Flynn had hundreds of conversations with foreign counterparts. It would have been a challenge for anyone to remember the words of a conversation under those circumstances; and, in their legerdemain, the FBI strategically refused to refresh Flynn’s recollection by playing recordings or showing a transcript.” (McCarthy)

In other words, Flynn might have simply misremembered details and not even tried to deny that he wasn’t sure about his answer.

• “Second, the FBI and prosecutors took inconsistent positions on whether Flynn intentionally misled them. The interviewing agents believed he was truthful, if forgetful. Director Comey reportedly said the question of whether Flynn lied was a “close call.” Assuming this is so, a close call is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” (McCarthy)

In other words, the original agents didn’t think Flynn had tried to lie.

• “Third, the agents went out of their way to deceive Flynn about the purpose of the interview, at which they hoped to trip him up. It is rote for FBI “302” reports — used to summarize witness interviews — to start by recounting that interviewing agents advised the subject of the nature of the interview. But they did not do that with Flynn. He was discouraged from consulting counsel and from reporting the FBI’s request to speak with him to his White House chain-of-command…” (McCarthy)

In other words, it looks a lot like he was set up.

• “Fourth, the two government witnesses in the case have monumental credibility problems. Under federal law, Flynn’s statements confessing guilt during his plea proceedings would not be admissible against him at trial if the plea were vacated.” (McCarthy)

In other words, they didn’t have the needed witnesses to prove their case. Despite this, Judge Sullivan has refused to drop the case, and instead bull headedly carries on trying to rule on a case in which parties, the prosecution and the defense, have asked to have charges dropped. This is clearly do to one thing only, a political motivation to see Flynn discredited and jailed. He is essentially a political prisoner in the United States of America.

It would be prudent to point out that so far, every aspect of investigation into Russian interference that we have looked at has shown it was driven by a clear political bias and that had undertaken as a deliberate effort to deceive the American people. It really is overwhelming just how malicious, dishonest, and corrupt the entire process was that led to the creation of the Russian collusion narrative. Even in its earliest days the entire premise rested on the shakiest of foundations. This lack of credible evidence, and the sweeping under the rug of exculpatory evidence, lasted until the very end of the campaign when finally, the Special Counsel concluded that there had been no collusion between Trump and Russia. Shortly afterwards the remaining allegation, that Russia had indeed still interfered, just on their own, also fell apart. With this knowledge and with hindsight this is not surprising, after all, that is what happened. We know that all of the allegations, everything that was used to prop up the Russian collusion narrative, originated from something that the DNC themselves paid for. The DNC, through the law firm Perkins Coie, started this all by paying for Crowdstirke to analyze their servers and by paying for Fusion GPS to create the Steele Dossier. However, regardless of how clear this is looking back, many were fooled as it unfolded. It was hard to imagine that it was all one big lie as the news repeated the story of Russian collusion night after night, getting more hysterical as time went on. The leaders of the various intelligence agencies continued to make guest appearances on these shows, publicly pushing the narrative that Russia had been responsible for the leaked emails. Somewhere along the line, as this continued for months on end and even more reports were released (pretending they weren’t all based on the same few unreliable sources), it started to be treated as an indisputable fact; Russia had interfered in the election by hacking the DNC and releasing their emails. We can see now that even as the case was falling apart behind the scenes the same few Obama Administration intelligence officials went on TV and boldly told the American people that they had seen strong evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia.  They were lying to the American people in order to sabotage a Presidential campaign, and later a sitting President.

While this narrative was being promoted and legitimized by the media and by high level government officials, it was also being countered and spoken against by others. Perhaps the most notable among them was Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Assange started to make appearances on TV shows where he would unambiguously refute the claim that Russia was responsible for getting him the DNC emails. Assange’s statements are important because he was one of the few people that had actually been in position to know the real truth. For example, in one appearance on the Sean Hannity Show Assange stated the following…

• “We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" (Bowerman)

In addition, Assange gave a very astute explanation for why the current federal government kept insisting that Russia was to blame.

• "They're (The Obama Administration) trying to delegitimize the Trump administration as it goes into the White House," Assange said. "They are trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate president." (Bowerman)

Now, why would Assange lie about this? He could have just kept his mouth shut and refused to comment, citing his commitment of confidentiality to his sources. Instead he vocally opposed what he saw as a campaign to spread a false premise designed to hurt Trump. On August 9, 2016 he went much further than this even. He was interviewed by a Dutch television station by the name of NOS. In this interview Assange said the following regarding Seth Rich…

Assange: “Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material, often very significant risks. There’s a 27-yearold that works for the DNC who was shot in the back, murdered, just two weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington… I am suggesting that our sources, ah, take risks and they, they become concerned to see things occurring like that…” (Flood)

This is a clear reference to Seth Rich, and a clear indication that Seth was his source. He also offered a 20,000$ reward to anyone who could offer information about Seth’s death. These statements and the actions he took offering a reward strongly implied strongly, and publicly, that Seth Rich had been his source for the DNC emails.

Assange’s statements represent a key point that we need to keep in mind. While they clearly point to Seth being his source, they had also helped explain why so many people lied and tried to blame it on Russia; he explained their goal in pushing the Trump Russia collusion narrative were twofold; firstly, they wanted to hide this truth that it was murdered DNC employee, Seth Rich, who was behind the leaks. Secondly, they wanted to hurt Trump’s chances at winning the Presidency, and if he won, have a way to delegitimize his victory. They could use this to undermine his political capabilities and limit his effectiveness. While we examine the actions of the people and groups who pushed this Russian collusion narrative for several years, a narrative we know turned out to be false, and it is important to remember that these might have been the motivating factors compelling them to do so. We need to keep in mind what was at stake. Granted, there were surely many different reasons and this idea was promoted in many different ways, but it is important not to lose sight of the big picture. We should always remember that the Russia collusion narrative came about initially for one simple reason; the DNC desperately needed someone to blame for their email leaks on so that they could deflect any suspicion away from Seth Rich. That someone became Russia, and over time the narrative that they worked hand in hand with Trump was turned into a political weapon of mass destruction and used directly to go after the Trump Presidency. The intelligence community, the media, and the DNC did everything they could to push this idea that Russia and Trump had joined forces and acted illegally in an attempt to subvert the American election process. They were effective in pushing this lie, and as a result it became the widespread belief among many Americans. To those who had the ability to critically think and apply logic, however, it was clear that there were cracks in the official story from the very beginning.

        Assange was not the only who publicly called into question the Russian collusion hypothesis. Another critic of the idea came directly from the Seth Rich murder case. In December of 2016 the investigation had seen the introduction of a private investigator named Rod Wheeler. Wheeler had started looking into the case on behalf of the Rich family. Seth’s parents, Joel and Mary Rich, signed a contract to hire Wheeler, while the money needed to pay for his services was handled by a third party  who was not publicly named at first. Wheeler was a former D.C. Homicide Detective and therefore had been well suited for this case. The Rich family hoped that he would be able to find out who killed their son, but it soon seemed they also wanted him to conclude that Seth had nothing to do with the leaks. Unfortunately for the Rich’s, Wheeler’s investigation unearthed something’s that did not point towards this being true. Wheeler started to find that there were a lot of inconsistent and unusual circumstances surrounding the case.

Wheeler was interviewed on a Fox News show by host Sean Hannity, and in the interview he mentions some of the oddities that he found. For example, when Rod asked the DC Police if they had Seth’s laptop in custody, they sent him a letter directing him to address his questions to the FBI. When he asked the FBI about whether the they had possession of the laptop, they directed him and his questions back to the DC Police. This treatment seems odd, but we will come back to this later as it will be a key point. Wheeler also claimed that he had met with federal investigator who was known to be very credible and very trustworthy, and this man told him that he had seen the laptop and the case file. Rod said the following on Hannity.

“Now, where does this information come from, in terms of knowing, or believing I should say, that Seth Rich could have been in communications with WikiLeaks? There was a federal investigator that was involved on the inside of the case, a person that’s very credible… and I will tell you this Sean; I don’t like to say things without telling you the person’s name, but I cant say the persons name because that person would be thrown under the bus.. and I can’t do that. But, this person, we checked him out, we have to check him out, very credible – he said he laid eyes on the computer and he laid eyes on the case file and he came across very credible. When you look at that with the totality of everything else that I've found on this case, it's very consistent, for a person with my experience, to begin to think, well perhaps there were some email communications between Seth and WikiLeaks. Every time I talk to the police department though Sean, every time I talk to the police department about the Wkileaks or the emails, it is automatically shut down, that discussion is automatically shut down" (Fox News)

Wheeler also describes that when he first approached the DC Police Department for help, he ran into some unsettling interference from a high level DNC source.

“I reached out the Police Department way back in March when the family first reached hired me to get involved. I didn’t hear anything from the Police Department for 2-3 days. Guess what I learned yesterday from the family of Seth Rich? The Police Department did not call me back because someone, a high ranking official at the DNC, check this out, a high ranking official at the DNC, when I called the Police Department they got that information and called the Rich family wanting to know “why was I snooping around?’” (Fox News)

He added the following.

 "There were some problems that Seth was having on his job at the DNC right before he was killed. And the person that called the father after I called the police to get information, that's the person that Seth was having problems with at the DNC. So connect the dots, here; it's starting to all come together." (Fox News)

Later Wheeler informed WND that the high-ranking official who had called the Rich family to ask why he was “snooping around” and who argued with Seth before his death was Donna Brazile. Donna Brazile was the DNC member who had passed Hillary debae questions while working at CNN, and who had taken over as interim DNC Chair after Wasserman-Schultz resigned as a result of the email leaks.

“The high-ranking DNC official that called the police after I inquired about Rich's case was Donna Brazile," veteran homicide detective Rod Wheeler told WND. "Why shouldn't I reveal who it was?" (WND)

Clearly Rod Wheeler had stepped into a situation in which he was not welcome. Now, given that the Rich family reportedly wanted Rod just help discredit any theories that he might have been the leak, it is not surprising they eventually issued a cease and desist order against him. They did so after Fox News published an article claiming that Seth was the source for Wikileaks, citing Wheeler as a source. This raises some interesting questions, why wouldn’t Rich family want him to pursue the genuine leads that were given to him by federal investigators, and why did they fire him after the Fox News article came out? It seems to me that the only explanation for their behavior that makes sense is that they know there were communications with Wikileaks and that, for whatever reason, they did not want this information to get out to the public. The other possibility is that they believe Wheeler is making this information up and not acting in good faith (this is an unrealistic explanation in my opinion, but we will see). Let us reserve judgement for now, but to me their behavior indicates two people who already know that their son was interacting with Wikileaks. Their interest in the PI seems to be as much with dispelling Seth’s connection to the leaks as it was with a desire to discover the true identity of the killers. Why else would they not want to pursue these incredibly interesting leads?

        If we were to step back and examine what we’ve gone over so far it becomes clear that the official narrative has fallen apart from two separate directions. It is becoming clear that the evidence that has been provided to show that Russia was behind the hacks has always been flimsy at best, and both sources were paid for by the DNC’s own lawyers, Perkins Coie. The decisions the DNC made regarding who they let examine the servers indicate that they were not concerned with the truth or with national security, but with pushing a predetermined narrative. The story was also falling apart from the other end, as through Assange’s statements and Rod Wheeler’s investigation it was becoming more and more clear that Seth Rich was not the victim of a botched robbery, and that he was instead it was starting to look like he might have been in communication with Wikileaks after all. Add to this the entire Mueller investigation finding no evidence to support any collusion and it was clear to see that the official story is in serious jeopardy of falling apart entirely.

        Knowing all of this and seeing day after just how ridiculously wrong the assertion that Trump and Russia had interfered in the 2016 election ended up being, I wanted to find out what had really happened. We had learned that the entire investigation into Trump was biased, and they had ignored any evidence that proved the Trump campaign was innocent. They had gone as far as to alter evidence to hide the fact that Page had only been in contact with Russians due to his work as a government source. According to everything I could see that two things were clear; the government falsely pushed the idea that Russia and Trump had colluded together to infere in the election, and that no one really knew, to any degree of certainty, that Russia was truly behind the DNC leaks. Given that, the obvious question becomes; if not Russia, who had been behind the leaks? Could it have been Seth Rich, as so much evidence seemed to indicate? Was this the reason he was murdered, not because of a botched robbery like we had been told, but to prevent him from going public with the emails he had obtained? Is this why the DNC had paid Perkins Coie to go to such extreme lengths to push this story by hiring Crowdstrike and also paying for the Steele Dossier? I decided that these were very real questions, not conspiracy theories, and I resolved to get to the bottom of this story however I could. I decided that I would examine all the evidence I could get my hands on and do my best to tell the story that the rest of the American press had ignored; the story of Seth Rich and the truth behind who leaked the DNC emails.

Chapter 4 - The Reporter and the Secret Tape

        The outline I’ve provided of the issues with Russian investigation don’t even began to cover the entire debacle. There have been plenty of books written that are more in depth and cover even more examples of issues with the Russian collusion narrative. That is not the purpose of this book, I aimed to cover well enough to get across one point; the entire idea of Trump colluding with Russia, even the idea that Russia engaged in interference at all in the 2016 election, was a political lie crafted and pushed by the DNC through their law firm Perkins Coie. Now that we have covered a basic history of how they did, it becomes clear that the explanation for the DNC leaks was falling apart as well; there was no proof that the Russians had been responsible for hacking the DNC. The evidence actually points to this explanation being a deliberate deception on behalf of the DNC instead. Once this is clear we are faced with the very serious question, if the process was completely corrupt and dishonest, and we cannot trust any of the conclusions that this process reached? The answer is that we cannot in any way, and because of this, if we want to uncover the truth, we’re going to have to find it ourselves. In a case such as this one, where the entire weight of the establishment is put behind pushing one narrative and squashing another, it can difficult to dig out the truth. The only way to ever arrive at a conclusion that can reasonably considered the truth is to ignore politics, ignore opinion, and focus on facts that can be verified. Once verified, these facts can then be compared to several different hypothesis’s or potential explanations of what might have happened. A careful examination must be undertaken to see which hypothesis allows the facts to exist without contradiction. This is the process I undertook in an attempt to solve this case. The first piece of evidence that I found, and the first that I want to bring to your attention to, is a video that was tweeted out by the WikiLeaks’s twitter account on Aug 1st, 2017. The video appears to be a recording that had been taken secretly of the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. In this recording Hersh outlines exactly what he knows about the Seth Rich case. When I heard this video for the first time, I was convinced that I might have just heard the true and real story. From that point on I used the recording as the backbone for my own investigation. I had this positive impression for several legitimate reasons, and one of them was the credibility that the speaker, Seymour Hersh, had built for himself as an investigative journalist.  

        Seymour Hersh is a well-known investigative reporter. He got his start in journalism writing for various news outlets, gaining national recognition when he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Mai Lai Massacre in 1970. He worked as an investigative reporter for the Washington Bureau of the New York Times for many years, where he gained a reputation as being a thorn in the side of the Intelligence Community for his work exposing their lies coverups over the years.  

Here is his description in the New Yorker.

Seymour M. Hersh wrote his first piece for The New Yorker in 1971 and has been a regular contributor to the magazine since 1993. His journalism and publishing awards include a Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. As a staff writer, Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his 2003 articles “Lunch with the Chairman,” “Selective Intelligence,” and “The Stovepipe.” In 2004, Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in the magazine; in 2005, he again received a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club Award, the National Press Foundation’s Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award, and his fifth George Polk Award, making him that award’s most honored laureate. (New Yorker)

Clearly, he is a well-respected and decorated journalist. He is not some random Joe off of the street.

I will now share with you the secret recording that I mentioned earlier. The following is a full transcript of Hersh’s words as found on the WikiLeaks’s. It was released publicly on Aug 1st, 2017.

“I’ll tell you what I know. All I know comes off an FBI report. Don’t ask me how — you can figure out — you’ve been around long enough. I don’t think he was murdered because of what he knew. The kid was not an IT expert, but he learned stuff. He was a data programmer, but he learned stuff.

He’s living in a very rough neighborhood, and in the exact area where he lives — I’m sure you know — there’s been about 8 or 9 or 10 violent robberies, most of them with somebody brandishing a gun. And the kid’s hands — I’m sure you know — his hands are marked up, the cops included he fought off the people, tried to run and they shot him twice in the back with a .22 small caliber, and then the kids that did it ran — they got scared — didn’t take his wallet.

Okay, so what the cops do then, and here’s what nobody knows, what I’m telling you — or maybe you know something about it — when you have a death like that, DC cops, you have to get to the kid’s apartment and see what you can find. If he’s dead you don’t need a warrant, but most cops get a warrant because they don’t know if the guy has a room-mate. You need a warrant, so they get a warrant. I am just telling you, there is such a thing.

They go in the house, and they can’t do much with his computer, it’s password. The cops don’t know much about it. So the DC cops, they have a cyber unit in DC and they’re more sophisticated. They come and look at it. The idea is maybe he’s had a series of exchanges with somebody who says ‘I’m going to kill you, you mother fucker over a girl’ or… And they can’t get in. The cyber guys are a little better, but they can’t make sense of it, so they call the FBI cyber unit. The DC unit, the Washington field office is a hot shit unit. The guy running the Washington field office, he’s like a three star at an army base. he’s ready for four. You know what I mean — he’s going to go for a top job. There’s a cyber unit there that’s excellent.

What you get in a warrant — the public information you get in a warrant — doesn’t include the affidavit underlying why you’re going in — what the reason was. That’s almost never available. I can tell you that. The existence of a warrant is a public document 99% of the time.

So, and the same morning they call in the feds. The feds get through and here’s what they find. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is he makes contact.

First of all, you have to know some basic facts. One of the basic facts is that there are no DNC or Podesta emails that exist beyond May 21st or 22nd, the last email from either one of those groups.

And so what the report says is that sometime in late spring/early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks. That’s in his computer, and he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian ten twelve years… I stay the f*** away from people like that. You know, he’s invited me, when I’m in London I always get a message, “Come see me at the Ecuadorian embassy.” Fuck you, I ain’t going there. I got enough trouble without getting photographed. He’s under total surveillance by everybody.

Anyway, they found what he had done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails, some juicy emails from the DNC. And you know, by the way all this shit about the DNC, you know, whatever happened the democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean. All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I’m sure dozens of emails, and said, “I want money.”

Then later Wikileaks did get the password. He had a DropBox — a protected DropBox — which isn’t hard to do. I mean you don’t have to be an IT wizard. He was certainly, he was not a dumb kid.

They got access to the DropBox. He also — this is also in the FBI report — he also let people know with whom he was dealing. I don’t know how he dealt with the Wikileaks and the mechanism but he also… The word was passed according to the NSA report, “I also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems.” Okay. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know whether he…

Anyway, Wikileaks got access, and before he was killed. I can tell you right now. Brennan’s an asshole. I’ve known all these people for years. Clapper sort of a (illegible) guy but not a rocket scientist. The NSA guy (Rodgers) is a fucking moron. And the trouble with all those guys is the only way they’re going to make it to, you know, get hired by SAI (illegible) and delivered some fat cat contract is if Hillary stayed in. With Trump they’re gone. They’re done. They’re going to live on they’re pension. They’re not going to make it. And I got to tell you, guys in that job, they don’t want to live on their pension. They want to be on boards making six hundred thousand bucks.

I have somebody on the inside. I’ve been around a long time and I write a lot of stuff. I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. This person is unbelievably accurate and careful. He’s a very high level guy. He’ll do a favor. You’re just going to have to trust me. I have what they call in my business, long form journalism, I have a narrative of how that whole f***king thing began.

It’s a Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation operation fucking the fucking president. And at one point they even started telling the press, they were back-briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press — fucking cocksucker Rogers — was telling the press that we even know who in the Russian military intelligence service leaked it. I mean all bullshit.

I worked for the New York Times for fucking years. The trouble with the New York Times is they have smart guys but they’re totally beholden on sources. If the president or the head of the (illegible) told them something, they actually believe it. I was hired by the Times to write about, go after the war, the Vietnam war in 72, because they were just locked in, so that’s what the Times is. These guys run the fucking Times. And Trump’s not willing to… I mean I wish he would calm down and had a better Press Secretary. Trump’s not wrong to think they all fucking lied about him.”

        Clearly there is going to be a lot unpack here. This is a stunning admission describing a stunning series of events if true. If we could somehow verify that this was really what it was claiming to be, the information would be worth taking seriously. Before we get to the point of verifying the information within the tape, it is imperative that we address this issue of identity. After all, it is a claim that many will use to try to discredit the content of this recording; namely, the fact that Seymour Hersh has denied that it is him that is heard speaking on the tape. I initially found his denials suspect partially because it is so clearly his voice on this recording. Seymour Hersh has a very distinct voice and speaking pattern. It would certainly be possible to replicate or fake this, but I found that unlikely. More importantly, I was not able to imagine a circumstance where Hersh would admit to being the person on the tape.

Let’s consider the two possibilities, the first is that it was Hersh, and that he really does have a high-level source whom he is worried about protecting. In this case he would not want the information that he had gathered, supposedly in the interest of creating long form story, leaking to the public too early. He would not want it known that he does truly have this information, it could be stolen, or he could be targeted himself. I think it is fairly obvious that in this scenario, Hersh would claim that it was not him speaking on the tape. The other possibility is that it was truly not him, in which case he would also deny that it was him who could be heard speaking on the tape. That leaves with one conclusion, Hersh’s denial is completely irreverent and unhelpful in determining whether or not it really is his voice on the tape. It would still necessary to confirm that it was, but we will need to turn to other means of verification to do this. I was eventually able to do this through analysis, and later by actually speaking with the person who made the recording himself. However, I want to present the results of my own investigation first before presenting what this person told me.  I do want to make one thing clear though; based on the end results of my entire investigation, I have absolutely zero doubt that it this tape is a genuine recording of Seymour Hersh.

        The first time I heard this recording I instantly had the impression that it could very well have been the real deal. Firstly, I was familiar with Hersh and knew that he was a respected investigative reporter who had broken plenty of high-profile stories in the past. He had helped expose the Mai Lin massacre, where he showed that hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians had been murdered by United States troops in 1968. The government had done it’s best to cover this event up, but despite this Hersh was able to publish a report that revealed the truth behind what had occurred. His report was one of the main factors that led to there being strong public opposition against the Vietnam War. The United States government had taken Hersh seriously, as it was revealed in 2017 that at the time Hersh had been on a National Security Agency watchlist, likely as a result of his reporting. He had also exposed, in 1983, that Korean Air Flight 007 had been shot down by the Soviet Union in part as a result of operations conducted by the United States designed to confuse Soviet responses to potential threats. His reporting on the Iraq War helped show that the reason for the invasion the public had been given was largely false,and prompted advisor to the Bush administration Richard Perle to describe Hersh as the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." Clearly Perle, a man who had been one of the architects for the invasion of Iraq and who had publicly supported the false claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, took Hersh’s reporting seriously.

Hersh’s past work had built him a reputation as a reliable journalist who had access to good sources. It also showed that possessed a rare willingness to go against the government’s publicly held positions and expose their deception. He had exposed several well-known political cover-ups, so it made sense that he had been able to get to the truth in this case. Apart from these sterling credentials, the content of the tape caught my attention in way that no explanation I had heard up until that point had been able to. Most notably, the tape helped answer two of the biggest questions that I’d had at this point regarding the Seth Rich case. These were questions that had bothered me, as well as other people who shared an interest in researching the case, because on the surface they appeared to run counter to the idea that Seth had been involved.  These questions had long been brought up by detractors of the idea that Seth was involved and had been used by the media to help discredit the idea that Seth Rich was the source.

The first question was this; why would Wikileaks take so much time to imply, heavily, that it was Seth who leaked the emails to them, but flat out refuse to say it outright? Why offer a 20,00$ reward about his death but not admit he was the source? The reason WikiLeaks’s publicly gave for not stating  the true identity of the source was that they always protected their sources. However, if that source had been murdered in the course of leaking the information, wouldn’t the best way to “protect” him be to expose to the world that he was murdered for his role in leaking the DNC emails? This behavior is very confusing if we believe that Seth was the source.

The second question was; why on earth is did Seth’s family go from begging for answers to vehemently fighting against the idea that he was the leaker? Why does the family call those who speculate about Seth’s involvement in the leak “conspiracy theorists?” Why do the publicly ask for people to not spread the idea the Seth was the leak? Why had the hired Wheeler only to fire him shortly after Fox News used him as source to claim Seth was involved? Why have they filed lawsuit, as they have, against those who have made this claim? The mainstream news runs with this information, using it time and time again to “debunk” the so-called conspiracy theory. If Seth was the true source, wouldn’t they have an idea that this was the case and a desire to see the truth of his murder exposed?

         These two questions always stood out in mind and I knew that I could not accept a theory that did not address them adequately. I believe researchers commit a fatal mistake when they ignore seemingly contradictory evidence like this. They are undeniably real occurrences and any true answer as to what happened will have to be able to incorporate and explain these two realities. The reason why it is so important to keep in mind these “big questions” is because when you find an answer or evidence that helps explain the mysterious parts of the case while also addressing and explaining these questions, you can have a pretty high degree of confidence that you are on the track. I saw information in the recording that explained the presence of these two big questions/seeming contradictions.

         When it came to the first question, I looked to the claim Seth did not leak these files on his own, that he had the help of friends. If Seth had indeed been helped by others while carrying out the leaking of the emails, maybe one these helpers was the source that WikiLeaks’s was still intent on protecting. That could explain why they were walking the fine line between heavily implying that it was Seth while never outright saying thar it was or offering proof. Similarly, If the help was someone close to Seth, i.e. a close friend or perhaps a relative, maybe the family was afraid for this person’s life as well, and perhaps fear of the potential legal repercussions that they might face for being involved. The Rich family had already lost one son, it would not be farfetched to assume they might be worried about what would happen if Seth had an accomplice that was eventually exposed. This person would be viewed as an accessory, one who helped Seth carry out the leaking of the emails and would probably rather his identity remain hidden from the public eye.

        Seeing that there were no glaring issues that I could identify with the information  found on the tape, and that overall it seemed like a plausible explanation for what happened, I decided to see what happened if I prodded deeper. If I could take any of the individual claims that were made and verify (or contradict) them with other information that was out there about the case, I could perhaps reach a conclusion about the authenticity of what was on the tape and maybe even learn the ultimate truth. I set out to do this by picking out the primary claims that Hersh made on the tape. With a list of several verifiable claims to look into, I started compiling as much information about the case as I possibly could. I dug into everything I could find that had been released regarding the murder of Seth Rich or the DNC email leak itself, I read hundreds of articles, government reports, and book about the Russian investigation. I listened to interviews of the key players, on both sides of the story, and took notes on what they had said. Once I had compiled everything that I could about the case, I begin the work of comparing them to the claims that Hersh had put forth; to see if the scenario he laid fit with the realities of the case. I knew that my first step, before I got to any of the details, would be to verify that this was Hersh on the recording. I needed to know it wasn’t just some hoax, and I needed to find out if Hersh would have even been able access to this information. It is also no great secret that Journalists can make mistakes and get incorrect information, but it would go a long if I could be sure, at least, that this wasn’t a complete fabrication and was at least Hersh on the tape.

Where Did the Tape Come From?

The story of how Wikileaks managed to obtain this revealing tape came to light a few months later; it turns out that someone close to Rod Wheeler’s private investigation had spoken with Hersh and recorded the phone call. This man’s name was Ed Butowsky. Butowsky was a wealth Dallas area financial advisor who had gotten involved in the case mostly by chance. We will cover Butowsky’s story in great detail later on in this book, but for now a basic outline of his involvement will be provided to help keep things in context. Butowsky first became involved in the case when a third party, ex Fox News analyst and longtime friend of Butowsky, Ellen Ratner, had told him about information she had received straight from Julian Assange himself. Ellen told Ed that she had met Assange recently and that he had told her Seth had been his source for the DNC emails. Upon the request of Ratner, Butowsky reached out to Seth’s parents and relayed this stunning information. Butowsky agreed to pay for a private investigator to look into Seth’s death on behalf of the Rich family, and this private investigator ultimately ended up being Rod Wheeler. During the course of his investigation Butowsky was put in touch with Seymour Hersh, and he recorded their phone conversation. Ed then sent this recording to several parties, including Wikileaks, and this was the conversation that appeared in the beginning of this.

Chapter 5 – The Inside Source

        I started at the very bottom, looking to see if I could find any sort of corroboration that this was even Hersh speaking. To do this I pulled out my first claim that I sought to verify. That claim was this; Hersh explained that he had a high-level source within the FBI. He further explained that this source is able access to the most secure and highly classified files within the FBI. According to Hersh, this source looked up the Seth Rich file and then relayed the information he had learned back to Hersh. Here are his exact words on the tape.

Excerpt - I have somebody on the inside. I’ve been around a long time and I write a lot of stuff. I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. This person is unbelievably accurate and careful. He’s a very high-level guy. He’ll do a favor. You’re just going to have to trust me. I have what they call in my business, long form journalism, I have a narrative of how that whole fucking thing began.

This is the central fact that the entire video hinges on. If this existence of this source could be verified, then the rest of the video becomes much more plausible. Given that not many people would have had a source like this, if I could determine he did it would also help verify that it was really him and some impressive hoax emulating his voice. Now, let’s take a critical look at this claim to see if we can find any information that might help corroborate it. It is worth noting that Hersh does have the background to make this claim at least plausible. He certainly has been in the business of digging up the secrets, secrets the intelligence community would rather keep buried, so it would make sense if he had picked up some real sources over the years. However, if what he describes in the video is true, this is not your typical source. This source would have to be extremely high level, extremely willing to do a favor, and would also be incredibly rare. The type of source that he describes would be incredibly unlikely, it is not often that a source is both willing to pass along high-level information (involving extremely sensitive modern-day incidents) and able to access said information.  

On the day that the tape was initially released to the public, Aug. 1st 2017, it was very much an open question as to whether or not such an incredible source existed within the upper ranks of the FBI. It was also very much in question, if the source did indeed exist, whether Seymour Hersh had any sort of relationship with him. Ironically, a critical piece of corroborating evidence did eventually come out and was available to anyone with a Netflix subscription. On Dec. 15th 2017, just few months after the recording was first tweeted out by WikiLeaks, an episodic documentary by the name of Wormwood debuted on Netflix. This documentary was not focused on Seth Rich, the DNC emails, or even Wikileaks. It was only superficially related to our case in that it involved a mysterious death, an official story that many people did not find satisfactory, a possible connection to the US IC, and the involvement of Seymour Hersh. Before I present and analyze the key piece of corroborating evidence that Wormwood provided, I want to give a brief overview of the series itself. We will get back to our attempts to verify the recording shortly, but the context I am about to provide will prove helpful in understanding the big picture.

The Netflix Series “Wormwood” Proves Hersh’s Source Exists

 The series Wormwood tells the story of a son who has been on a lifelong quest to solve the mysterious death of his father, Frank Olsen. Frank Olsen was a man who, much like Seth Rich, only entered the public spotlight after his violent death. Much like Rich, the circumstances that surrounded the death were murky and suspicious and had potential national security implications. Frank was a biologist, a bacteriologist to be specific, employed by the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (USBWL) at the time of his death. He worked at the Ft. Detrick Army base in Maryland and spent his days studying how diseases were spread and the potentials implications of biological agents in warfare. In 1953 Frank somehow fell out of his hotel room window. He plummeted from the 15th floor down to the hard concrete, sustaining injuries that ultimately resulted in his death. Little explanation was given, the police had little to no information to go on, and the case soon turned cold. As a result Frank’s son Eric grew up never really knowing what had happened to his father. He had spent his entire childhood struggling with the lack of answers and found that his family discouraged any talk of the accident. He explains in the series that his mother felt that they would never know the truth, so that any talk or questions about how their father died was futile. They went on living in ignorance like this for over 20 years.

It wasn’t until 1975 that the first story attempting to explain his death was offered by the US government. In December of 1974, Seymour Hersh published an article in the New York Times detailing some of the illegal domestic activities that the CIA had undertaken. Hersh exposed illegal domestic spying, CIA experiments that were unethical and often performed without the subject’s knowledge or consent, and further disturbing allegations of misconduct. This report was a massive problem for the CIA’s image, and in response a congressional commission was created with instructions to investigate the allegations further. It was in in the resulting congressional testimony of the Rockefeller Commission that the first explanation for the death of Frank Olsen was given by the government. The CIA admitted that Frank Olson had been dosed with LSD without his knowledge as part of a secret experiment to see how people would react to the drug. This incident was just 9 days prior to his death, and the explanation was that he had suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the experiment that had caused him to commit suicide.  

Once Frank’s family learned of this from the testimony, Wormwood shows how they went on to pursue justice for the negligent death of their father with the help of Seymour Hersh, a relationship that the family would maintain over the decades that they spent pursuing the truth. However, as time went on, it seemed that instead of finding the answers and closure they were looking for, all that would turn up were more questions and further inconstancies. When it came to the truth about what had happened to Frank, the official story was simply not holding up. Because of this, Eric (the son of Frank) decided that he was going to have his father’s body exhumed and examined by a renowned forensic pathologist named James Starr. Starr taught both Law and Forensic Science at George Washington University National Law Center and was known as one of the pioneers in the field of forensic pathology. The results of the postmortem autopsy performed by Starr and his team where shocking and quite telling. They found clear blunt-force trauma to Frank’s head, as well as an injury to the chest, that could not have occurred during or as a result of the fall. These two injuries would have had to occurred before he went through the window, indicating that he was assaulted and then forced through the window.[1] Starr went on to conclude that the evidence was "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide,” a statement wholly incompatible with the official explanation from the CIA (suicide). This was a huge breakthrough in the case, and was the first real, tangible, and credible piece of evidence that Frank had not committed suicide and was instead murdered.  

I will refrain from relitigating the entire case that is presented throughout Wormwood, but I will say this, the forensic evidence that showed Olson had been knocked out and thrown from the window is not the only indication we have that Frank had been intentionally murdered. The odd behavior of the CIA after the death, the multiple stories given as explanation, and a whole lot more point to the CIA having something to hide. Over the years the CIA was caught in a web of contradictory statements, and a lot of questions had been left unsatisfactorily answered when it came to the LSD-suicide story. Frustrated by the government’s obvious lack of candor and armed with several years’ worth of the new evidence that they had compiled, Frank’s two sons again took the federal government to court in 2013. They sued for damages and also for further information regarding Frank’s death that the CIA had been withholding from them thus far. The case was eventually dismissed on technical grounds partly because they had signed a settlement with the government regarding this case in the past. Interestingly, the judge felt compelled to publicly weigh in on the merits of the brother’s case. In a stunning claim he wrote the following… "While the court must limit its analysis to the four corners of the complaint, the skeptical reader may wish to know that the public record supports many of the allegations (in the family's suit), farfetched as they may sound." (Wikipedia)

 Frustrated, but convinced his evidence proved that his father was murdered, Eric Olson again reached out to Seymour Hersh. Seymour initially greeted Eric with skepticism and insisted that the case had been solved years ago when the CIA admitted to drugging Olson with LSD as part of an illicit experiment. Eric, angered by Hersh’s reaction, told him that he did not know what he was talking about, and laid out all of the evidence that he had found since they had last touched base on the case. Hersh obviously heard something that convinced him Eric was on to something, because he went from skeptical to curious himself. He promised Eric that he would investigate it and see what he could he find out. What he was able to find out was incredible. The information he was able to obtain not only led to a major breakthrough in the Olson case, but also provided a crucial piece of evidence that would aid my investigation into Seth Rich and the DNC leak.  

Hersh, upon learning the evidence that Eric Olson had been able to obtain showing his father was murdered, decided to look further into the allegation. Hersh reached out to a friend who he describes as a very high-level official within the U.S. intelligence community.  

 “I had been a reporter for 15 years, had won all sorts of prizes, … and I still didn’t know how it plays. I accepted the story that he was given LSD because I was only 15 years into the business. The CIA was using LSD on people, that would be bad. But I think the real bad is something worse, that they killed him.

“If I published what I knew, I would make someone into a Snowden, that’s one thing. And secondly, even if I published what I knew, I would have to have someone else saying something. But do I believe something heinous happened to Olson? Yes. Do I believe he was seen as somebody who was a malcontent? Yes.”

Eric Olson recounts the situation in Wormwood in the following interaction.

Interviewer: “Do you think he doesn’t believe what he heard?”

Eric Olson: “No, I don’t think that is even within the realm of possibility. He knows that what he heard is true, he completely trusts the source from which he got it. I asked Sey once “why do you think your source told you this?” and he said, “well he told me because I asked him. We’re good friends, he had the answer and he told me. That’s it””

Interviewer – “What makes you so sure that this source is telling Sey the truth?”

Nobody had a motive to make up a story this horrendous. Why would you do that? Why? This was a devasting thing to hear. My father was executed by the CIA. This was a fully authorized, institutional decision.”

“He (Hersh) is the only guy who would have had the sources and the judgment to ask the to right question of the right guy… and he nails it. When I give him the right question, he poses the question to the source, and 48 hours later he’s got it.”

When describing where Hersh’s source got the information…

Eric Olson: “The deepest, darkest, most sequestered vault in all of Washington,”

Interviewer - “A vault, inside of a vault, inside of a vault?”

Eric Olson – “That’s my, my kind of metaphor for the thing. It’s a place that no one would have thought to go and that very few would have had access to.”

Interviewer – “Is it (the file on his father’s case) in a box?”

Eric Olson – “I don’t know. Is it in a file, just on a book shelf? I don’t know. Is it in a file drawer? I don’t know. I am just amazed that it’s anywhere.. and I’m amazed that this guy would then tell Hersh about it. He had gone to a place, and I don’t know where, but somewhere, the deepest of the deep vaults, and had found a document which that describes, exactly, what had happened in this incident... in detail. And this source had then taken notes on this document and had recited those notes to Sey Hersh.”

Some relevant excerpts from Hersh in the series that prove he did indeed have such a source...

Hersh: “I believe he was killed; I have reason to believe he was killed, but I can’t prove it. There’s a crucial fact that would make the case, but it would also finger people, so I can’t do it. I have tried very hard to find out more information… and I probably will eventually. I found out other instances about suspicious deaths.”

He explains how he and the source interacted, and how he managed to get the source to retrieve the information for him.

Hersh: “Suppose I ask somebody, what do you know about Olson? Somebody’ll maybe know something, or maybe someone will say “I’ll take a look,” but then what he learns and how he learned it, is what I can’t talk about. People sign in for things.”

He explains his hesitancy to publish the information that the source gave him.

Hersh: “The mechanism of this process, if I’m right, that he was done in, there was a mechanism. It wasn’t ad hoc.”

Interviewer – “What do you mean by a mechanism?”

Hersh - “See I knew you would ask that question, what do you mean what do you mean? A mechanism. There was a procedure.”

Interviewer – “A procedure to eliminate undesirables?”

Hersh - “Mm-hmm. Why not? If you have a dissident in a system, maybe you have a procedure for dealing with it. And maybe some of the people who wrote some of the reports were involved in the procedure. Maybe it was all just one big, frantic cover up.”  

There is a lot to unpack here, and this absolutely shocking information. We can learn a lot from examining the various statements from Wormwood shown here. They provide remarkable insight into how the intelligence community of the US government operates, particularly when they believe someone is going to leak sensitive information. Since we can reasonably say that Frank Olson was murdered by the CIA, these agencies are clearly given the leeway to kill potential leakers in the name of protecting national security. This will be shocking to some people. Many will flat out refuse to believe it despite having clear evidence in front of them that this is the case. Since this will undoubtedly be a sticking point for some, for now, I just want to focus on how this information connects to the murder of Seth Rich. We are only trying to determine if we can prove Seth was the source for the leak, we can address the question of his murder if and when we are able to do that.

        Now, if our goal was to find corroboration that the source mentioned on the recording actually exists, I think this is about as good as it is going to get. The statements prove not only that Hersh has a high-level source, but that the source has access to the most sensitive and highly classified information in existence. It also shows he is willing to leak this information to Hersh and is reliable. The timing also points to this, this series came out months after the tape. Wormwood was released on Dec. 15th, 2017. This tape was released on Aug 1st, 2017.  That means that the existence of this source was not publicly available knowledge, by any means, when the recording was released. I think it safe to say that at the very least we can conclude that the person speaking on the tape is indeed Seymour Hersh. I also think that a reasonable person will be forced to admit that the information we hear is really from this source. That is to say, Hersh really was told everything that he claims about Rich by a reliable and credible source. Having acknowledged this, one question we need to answer is; who was this source? Another, perhaps more important question for us; is the story that the source, whoever he was, told Hersh accurate?

Ed Butowsky Gives a Name to the Source

Ed Butowsky, the Dallas businessman who became involved in the Seth Rich case almost by chance. In a complaint filed in a lawsuit brought by Butowsky there are several relevant corroborating details that can be found, so we are going to need to dig a bit deeper into Butowsky’s story.  Butowsky, as he explains in a legal filing, was contacted by Ellen Ratner, who claimed to have spoken with Julian Assange. Ratner told Ed that Julian Assange had revealed to her that Seth and his brother Aaron had been responsible for the DNC email leaks and that they were also WIkileak’s sources. Ratner then asked for Ed to contact the Rich family and let them know that this was the case. Ed eventually did this, and when he spoke with Seth’s father, Joel, he told Ed that he had already known about his son’s involvement. Joel told Ed that he had no idea who had killed Seth, but that this was his main concern. Ed offered to pay for a private investigation and Joel agreed. This is how Rod Wheeler became the private investigator for the Rich family who was tasked with looking into who had murdered Seth. Ed ended up being involved with the case because of this arrangement and was later used as a scapegoat to blame for the reporting that surfaces regarding Seth’s connection to Wikileaks. In his filing he also alleges that Sy Hersh had told him that a source within the IC had told him Seth was the WL source. He also states the following…

• “In a separate phone call with Mr. Butowsky, Mr. Hersh said he obtained his information about -Seth Rich from Mr. McCabe, the deputy FBI director.” (Butowsky)

        Andrew McCabe would certainly fit the description given by Hersh regarding his source. McCabe was the Deputy Director of the FBI from February 2016 until January 2018. McCabe joined the FBI in 1996 as a special agent. When James Comey was fired by Trump on May 9, 2017, to McCabe served as the Acting FBI Director until August 2, 2017. He was certainly in position to know what happened with Seth Rich and fits the description given by Hersh in Wormwood. Remember that the information the source accessed for Hersh was described as “a place that no one would have thought to go and that very few would have had access to.” If we take him at his word and assume that he is not being hyperbolic, “very few” would probably mean someone at the Deputy Director or Director level of one of the intelligence agencies, the NSA, CIA, FBI, or perhaps the DNI. Notice that in Hersh’s statements he criticizes the directors of the NSA (Mike Rogers), the CIA (John Brennan) and the Director of National Intelligence (James Clapper) for being involved in the cover up. Notice what department is oddly lacking criticism, the FBI. James Comey and Andrew McCabe somehow manage to skate by from Hersh’s revelations, meaning that this source seems to have left out any information that makes the FBI look particularly complicit. It is hard to believe that Comey and McCabe were not involved, so perhaps their absence indicates something else, that Butowksy is telling the truth and that Hersh’s source truly is Andrew McCabe.  

Chapter 6 – The Chain of Custody

To keep things in perspective; so far we have successfully established that Seymour Hersh does indeed have a relationship with the type of incredibly rare source that he describes on the tape. This knowledge gives the tape a tremendous amount of credibility and gave me the initial belief that I needed to seriously look into his claims. I had good reason to think they might a true account of insider information, from the one of highest sources possible, and that if what Hersh says could be verified it might help prove what really happened. Knowing this fact, that Hersh without a doubt had this source, really changed everything. It took what would otherwise only be highly suspect potential hoax that most people would have viewed as unserious or unreliable, and turned it into something that could potentially contain the accurate behind the scenes story of what happened to Seth Rich. There was no question now that Hersh had the means to obtain this sort of information, and he was probably the only person in the world that we could confidently say that about at this point (outside of those directly involved in the case). Given this knowledge it would be crazy to dismiss this tape off hand. Here is what I now knew.

• The one man that we know, for certain, has the means to access the truth was secretly recorded divulging what he knew about Seth Rich.
• This tape was recorded during what Hersh believed was a private conversation.
• Upon hearing the content contained in this recording Wikileaks, the one non-governmental organization that unquestionably knows the identity of the source, Wikileaks, decided to publish it to the world.    

Given all of this it we would be crazy not to, at the very least, take an unbiased look at what Hersh had to say and to see if it holds up to scrutiny. If we are being intellectually honest and following the facts wherever they take us, we are forced to admit that this is starting to look like it might be legitimate, this might be the real deal. While still far from proven, the scenario of how this information was supposedly obtained is both plausible and possible, giving us a good faith reason to examine the evidence with an open mind. There is no reason, as of yet, to not continue on looking deeper at the information.

Continuing this endeavor to verify or falsify the claims put forth on the tape, I looked for the next statement that could be checked into and found another such statement very easily. In fact, the ease at which I was able to find the next piece of verifiable information was a good sign. When it comes to evaluating a story or statement for credibility, ambiguity in the various supporting details is a red flag. The lack of clear details, the absence of any information that can be corroborated or checked up on, is in general considered an indicator of deception. However, the converse is also true. The presence of clear and unambiguous details bolsters credibility; the more details provided the higher the initial credibility. As I dug deeper into the recording it became clear, it undoubtably fits into the latter category. It is full of explicit and material information. One such example is Hersh’s description of the steps the government took while attempting to access Seth’s laptop. On top of this, the chain of custody he does describe is an unorthodox and unusual one, making it even more likely that we will be able to find corroborating or contradicting evidence. Let’s take another look at the relevant portion of the transcript to see who all Hersh claims had the laptop in their custody. I will indicate the two different groups with a (1) and (2).

“…here’s what nobody knows, what I’m telling you — or maybe you know something about it — when you have a death like that, DC cops, you have to get to the kid’s apartment and see what you can find. If he’s dead you don’t need a warrant, but most cops get a warrant because they don’t know if the guy has a room-mate. You need a warrant, so they get a warrant.

(1.) They (local DC police) go in the house, and they can’t do much with his computer, it’s password (protected). The cops don’t know much about it. So the DC cops, they have a cyber unit in DC and they’re more sophisticated. They come and look at it. The idea is maybe he’s had a series of exchanges with somebody who says ‘I’m going to kill you, you mother fucker” over a girl or… And they can’t get in. The cyber guys are a little better, but they can’t make sense of it, (2). so they call the FBI cyber unit. The DC unit, the Washington field office is a hot shit unit. The guy running the Washington field office, he’s like a three star at an army base. he’s ready for four. You know what I mean — he’s going to go for a top job. There’s a cyber unit there that’s excellent.

What you get in a warrant — the public information you get in a warrant — doesn’t include the affidavit underlying why you’re going in — what the reason was. That’s almost never available. I can tell you that. The existence of a warrant is a public document 99% of the time.

(2). So, and the same morning they call in the feds. The feds get through and here’s what they find. This is according to the FBI report.”

        The claim itself is pretty straight forward, but there is a lot of background information you will need in order to understand its implications. Hersh states that there were two different governmental organizations that made attempts to get access to the laptop. He identifies the first group as the DC Police. First they tried to gain access with lower levels of the police department, and eventually it was escalated to a cyber unit. None of these various attempts by the DC Police was successful. Since the Capitol Police did not have any luck the FBI took over custody of the laptop. By utilizing a renowned cyber unit the FBI is able to gain access. As I stated before, this is an unorthodox chain of custody for a local homicide investigation. Even though it happened in DC the FBI would not usually have jurisdiction, or even a reason, to be involved in this case if had only been a botched robbery. There only two possible reasons that their involvement would have been solicited, either the DC Police asked them for help, or the homicide was connected to an issue of national security (or both). There is literally no other explanation.

        Is there any indication that this really happened? What has been the FBI’s (and mainstream media’s) position when it came to whether or not the FBI was involved? This is what a Polifact “fact-check” article purporting to debunk the theory that Seth Rich was involved. It claims…

“Some media outlets have reported that anonymous FBI and law enforcement officials confirmed the agency is not investigating Rich’s death, and that Washington police never gave them Rich’s laptop and therefore the agency hadn’t examined its contents. An FBI spokeswoman confirmed only that Rich's death was being investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department.” (6)

Clearly the FBI is making an effort to distance themselves from this by denying their involvement. This also offers a good opportunity to point something out about supposed fact checkers, as you see here, they often offer absolutely no independent verification or real evidence for their refutation. They simply cite an anonymous FBI source (that told CBS reporters) (6) and the words of an FBI spokesperson as if they are gospel. It is certainly no secret that the government and it’s various agencies lie all the time for a variety of reason. There statements can be included to provide context, but it is simply unethical and dishonest to make any definitive declarations based on the words of an unnamed source or those of an FBI spokesperson. In fact, I can prove they were lying in this very instance, and I will. Despite evidence contradicting this PolitiFact has not amended their “fact-check” article as of the time of this writing. I show this to demonstrate two things, one is that the FBI’s official position was that they did not handle the laptop. The second is that the mainstream media deceives and misleads in this case, pushing narrative and not fact. This is something you will see again and again. When you are evaluating whether or not an agency has been involved in misconduct or a cover up, it is absolutely insane and impractical to expect them to do anything other than deny the allegations. This would be like “fact checking” an ongoing murder case because the accused man on trial for murder denied any involvement. It is absurd and not remotely responsible journalism. Of course, they are going to deny involvement about something they don’t want public. That fact tells us absolutely nothing about what truly happened.  

        So, given that the official position is not based on evidence or facts, but simply the word of FBI officials themselves, let’s consider the idea that his is “debunked” to be flimsy at best. Where else can we turn to see if this claim holds any truth whatsoever?

        Well, the first piece of evidence I will present that backs up the idea that the FBI and DC Police both handled the laptop is Sean Hannity’s interview with private investigator Rod Wheeler that was mentioned in a previous Chapter. 

In this interview Rod claims the following...

“There was a federal investigator involved on the inside of the case, a person that is very credible, and I will tell you this, Sean, I don’t like to suggest things without saying persons the name, but I cant say the persons name because that person would be thrown under the bus and I can’t do that. But this person, we checked him out, we had to check him out, very credible, he said he laid eyes on the computer and he laid eyes on the case file. He came across very credible. When you look at that with the totality of every else I found in this case, it is very consistent with a person of my experience to begin think that, well, perhaps there were some emails communications between Seth and Wikileaks.” (Fox News)

Sean then presses Wheeler about who has the laptop and who has seen it, he tells Sean this..

“We actually have a statement from the FBI saying, telling us to contact the DC Police. The DC police says contact the FBI. Now, which is it? If this is just a murder investigation, first of all, why would the FBI be involved? The only reason the FBI would be involved, just so the viewers understand, is if this has some degree of national exposure, meaning maybe it related to the DNC” (Fox News)

Just to clear up any confusion, Rod tells Hannity that he had a source within the investigation that told him the FBI has had access to the computer. Upon learning this Rod wrote to the DC Police asking if they had Seth’s laptop in custody. Their response? They sent him a letter directing him to address further questions to the FBI. Likewise, when he asked the FBI about whether the they had possession of the laptop, they directed him and his questions back to the DC Police.    

This only makes sense under one set of circumstances; the FBI and the DC Police had BOTH handled the laptop. The DC Police are not going to randomly direct investigators to the FBI if the FBI had never had possession of the laptop. That would be completely ridiculous, why would they do that unless they had reason to? Similarly, for the FBI, they would not send him to the DC Police unless the DC Police had also handled the laptop. The lawyers that composed these letters know better, and they would not do this unless they had cause and saw an opportunity to shirk the responsibility off on someone else. This seemingly confusing and nonsensical situation (you can clearly tell Rod is perplexed) makes perfect sense when considers in the light of Hersh’s story, that they both handled it.

The second I saw this I knew that this detail had been confirmed. There is really no other explanation to the two statements Rod received. Either it played out exactly as Hersh said or the FBI was involved because of national security (or both). There is no other explanation.

My deduction was confirmed without ambiguity a few months later. Both the FBI and the mainstream media who took their word as gospel were proven wrong through the deposition of FBI Attorney Deborah Sines. This deposition was incredibly eye opening for many reasons that we will cover later, but for now the bombshell I want to focus on that this deposition exposed is this; the FBI did examine Seth Rich’s computer and the FBI had been lying about it. Keep in mind this deposition was conducted under oath, so it should provide reliable information if she makes an admission.

First, some context. The reporting surrounding the Seth Rich has been atrocious and completely unconcerned with the truth. The stance of almost every major news organization is that the idea that Seth Rich was the WikiLeaks’s source is a wacky conspiracy theory. The only network that approached the story with any semblance of integrity was Fox News, at least initially. As a result of Fox’s reporting lawsuits were filed in order to intimidate them and those who had contributed to their reporter and also to dictate their coverage. Fox News has since completely avoided the topic despite major developments that have occurred. It has an absolute mess of legal filings, but one battle positively broke the dam of suppressed information wide open.

For this case we come back to Ed Butowsky, the wealthy Dallas businessman who had worked with Fox News and who became involved in the case when he was reached out to by Ellen Ratner, and who had financed the work of private detective Rod Wheeler. This led to a Fox New article covering the situation. The article was based in part on information from Butowsky. After the article was published Butowsky was sued twice by the Rich family. The first defamation lawsuit came from Seth Rich’s parents and was later followed up by another defamation suit from Seth Rich’s brother Aaron. He was also sued by the private investigator he helped fund, Rod Wheeler. Now, I claimed these lawsuits were intimidation tactics, and I do have the evidence to back this up. I will lay this out fully later, and as mentioned previously, I will go into much more detail about Ed Butowksy, his story, association with Fox News, and all of the lawsuits. For now, I want to focus on the information that came out of the cases. It is important to know that both lawsuits were eventually tossed out of court. The judge ruled that they had failed to establish any of the claims were defamatory in nature. Afterwards, an appeals court reversed the decision, and the lawsuits against Ed Butowsky were allowed to proceed. But initially, feeling vindicated, Butowsky wasted no time in filing a series of his own suits in an effort to clear his name. He was adamant that he had a legitimate basis for the information and set out to prove it.

Butowsky sued the Charles Schwab Corp. for alleged politically motivated termination, he sued NPR and NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik for making false and defamatory statements against him when they published an article alleging, he made up a story in conjunction with Trump. The judge for the NPR case denied a request by NPR to dismiss the suit, explaining the he accepted “the factual allegations in the complaint as true” and considered them to be “in the light most favorable to Plaintiff.” Given that these lawsuits are ongoing when I first read about them, I had not completely decided Ed’s story to be fact, but it is clear to me that the facts seemed to at least be mostly on Butowsky’s side. From the dismissals of the initial cases brought against him to the favorable comments from the judge in his libel suit against the media, it would seem that Botowsky had a legitimate basis for the information he provided Fox News.

The legal warfare surrounding Butowsky is again relevant because it eventually led to the legal deposition, under oath, of Deborah Sines. This deposition was conducted in relation to the lawsuit he filed against David Folkenflik of NPR. Deborah Sines was a U.S Attorney employed by the Department of Justice who had spoken with reporter Michael Issikof. Butowsky alleged that she had spoken to Isikoff about her involvement in the Seth Rich case. The deposition is nothing short of devasting for the official story that story that FBI had no involvement in the Rich case. Recall that we are setting out to verify the claim made by Hersh that both the DC Police and FBI both handled Seth’s laptop. It only takes a few questions to get find that verification. In this excerpt she is being questioned by Attorney Ty Clevenger.

Q: Good morning Ms. Sines, could you please state your full name on the record?

A: Deborah Lynn Sines.

Q: And you previously were an assistant U.S Attorney in Washington D.C. –

A: Yes.

Q: -- is that correct?

A: I said “yes.”

Q: And I also understand you were – I’m sorry, go ahead.

A: I said “yes.”

Q: Okay. And were you also assigned as the lead in prosecutor in the Seth Rich murder case?

A: Yes.

I would characterize Sines as adversarial and hostile during this deposition. There was a dispute that she had not provided everything that was requested of her. She was ordered to turn over communications regarding Seth Rich, and when she was confronted with something that she had withheld, she claimed that it was related to Aaron, Seth’s brother, and not Seth. This is nonsense, of course, as you will see later Aaron was heavily involved in the whoel situation. A lot of back and forth follows, and eventually she reveals that she had confirmed to Isikoff that the FBI had examined Seth Rich’s personal computer.

Q: And let’s go to the next paragraph on the first page. Isikoff is quoted – it’s in the bottom paragraph – as it turns out, there was one sliver of truth in the Fox News story. The FBI had been examining Seth’s computer. Did you tell Mr. Isikoff that?

A: I – I – I – I guess I did. How else would he know it?

Q: Okay. And as far as you know to this day, were your statements to Mr. Iskoff in that regard truthful?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you know what part of the FBI – for example, we mentioned CART earlier – do you know what part of the FBI would have examined his computer?

A: Yes.

Q: And can you say whether that was the CART division –

A: I already told you no.

Q: -- the CART team?

A: No. ….

        So, there you have it. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the FBI was lying, the Polifact fact check is inaccurate, and that the course of events laid out by Hersh are absolutely and 100% verified. The DC Police initially took charge of this case. The only way the FBI would have wound up in possession of the laptop is if the DC Police gave it to them. There would be two possible reasons for this, the first is that they found something related to national security, the second is that they were unable to get in (as Hersh states), or both. From this deposition it seems like the latter is exactly what happened. Recall the hot-shot FBI cyber unit that Hersh claims was able to finally crack open the laptop. From the deposition it appears that the division responsible for handling the laptop might have been the FBI CART, or the Computer Analysis Response Team. The lawyer asking the questions, Ty Clevenger seems to have reason to believe this is this case. Judging by Sines evasiveness and distinct lack of denial, his belief also appears to be correct. What exactly is the CART division?

Directly from CART’s own website:

“… our Computer Analysis Response Team, or CART, is the FBI’s go-to force for providing digital forensic services not only to our own investigators but also in some instances to our local, state, and federal partners.

CART consists of nearly 500 highly trained and certified special agents and other professional personnel working at FBI Headquarters, throughout our 56 field offices, and within the network of Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories across the nation. They analyze a variety of digital media—including desktop and laptop computers, CDs/DVDs, cell phones, digital cameras, digital media players, flash media, etc.—lawfully seized as part of our investigations.” (fbi.gov)

Additionally, Sines revealed that that there would be records related to this investigation, and shockingly, that she met with both the Mueller team. Wouldn’t she have told the Mueller team the truth about Seth’s laptop? Yet, as we all know, they stuck to the Russian hack story.

        If our goal was to see if we could find evidence that backs up Hersh’s account of the chain of custody for Seth’s laptop, to show it was accurate, then there is zero doubt that we have succeeded. Let’s take a quick look back at what Hersh said..

“They (local DC police) go in the house, and they can’t do much with his computer, it’s password (protected). The cops don’t know much about it. So the DC cops, they have a cyber unit in DC and they’re more sophisticated. They come and look at it. The idea is maybe he’s had a series of exchanges with somebody who says ‘I’m going to kill you, you mother fucker” over a girl or… And they can’t get in. The cyber guys are a little better, but they can’t make sense of it,. so they call the FBI cyber unit. The DC unit, the Washington field office is a hot shit unit”. 

The fact that Rod Wheeler was sent to the FBI by the DC Police, and then in turn sent to the DC Police by the FBI, shows that they both had possession of the laptop. This is exactly what Hersh claimed when none of this was close to being public knowledge. I knew the statements given to Wheeler were verification immediately upon hearing about them, but I wanted something more concrete for those that are skeptical. Luckily, the deposition of Deborah Sines provided sworn testimony, taken under oath, that unequivocally proves the FBI had indeed accessed Seth’s laptop. Despite the countless anonymous sources and fact-checks stating otherwise, we now know this this to be a 100% verified fact. It also appears that the forensic work was indeed done by a “hot shot FBI cyber unit.” We even know the likely name of cyber unit from statements given in the deposition. It was almost certainly the FBI’s CART team, the self-proclaimed “go-to force for providing digital forensic services not only to our own investigators but also in some instances to our local, state, and federal partners.” The FBI CART program just so happens to have a field office in Washington D.C.

        If you aren’t starting to take this recording seriously by now, I suggest you go back and reread the last few chapters. We have proven that Seymour Hersh does indeed have the kind of source he describes having, a source that appears extremely unlikely at first glance. We verified that he did have a relationship with a high level intelligence official, that this official was willing to leak information (the kind that people had been trying to get unsuccessfully for decades) to Hersh, and that his information had matched the known facts and solved a previously mysterious death. This source made Hersh one of the only people on earth that would have the means to obtain an accurate account of what the government knew about Seth Rich. When we started to evaluate the supposed insider information, the first claim we take a look at turns out to be dead on accurate. This was a claim that flew in the face of everything that had been stated thus far in public relating to this case, yet it turned out to be 100% accurate and was only corroborated two years later.      

Chapter 7 – The Russian Hack (that wasn’t a Russian hack)

        Continuing with our evaluation, we reach the next verifiable claim quickly. It is the meat of the entire issue and probably the most important piece of information in this entire recording. This chapter will be crucial in terms of understanding the bigger picture here and explaining the subsequent events that have defined American politics since 2016. Keep in mind the official story, the DNC claimed that Russia was responsible for hacking their servers remotely. They claimed that Russia gave the emails that they had obtained to Wikileaks, and that somehow the Trump campaign helped them in this effort. Keep in mind that the entire narrative of “Russian collusion” is predicated on the idea the Russia was responsible for the DNC email leaks. I promise everything will come together and that I will explain how it all comes together, but you will need to truly pay attention to the details and think through the information critically. For now, let’s start by taking another look at what Hersh claims the FBI found on Seth’s computer.  

“So, and the same morning they call in the feds. The feds get through and here’s what they find. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is he makes contact.

First of all, you have to know some basic facts. One of the basic facts is that there are no DNC or Podesta emails that exist beyond May 21st or 22nd, the last email from either one of those groups.

And so what the report says is that sometime in late spring/early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks. That’s in his computer, and he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian ten twelve years… I stay the f*** away from people like that. You know, he’s invited me, when I’m in London I always get a message, “Come see me at the Ecuadorian embassy.” Fuck you, I ain’t going there. I got enough trouble without getting photographed. He’s under total surveillance by everybody.

Anyway, they found what he had done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails, some juicy emails from the DNC. And you know, by the way all this shit about the DNC, you know, whatever happened the democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean. All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I’m sure dozens of emails, and said, “I want money.”

Then later Wikileaks did get the password. He had a DropBox — a protected DropBox — which isn’t hard to do. I mean you don’t have to be an IT wizard. He was certainly, he was not a dumb kid.

They got access to the DropBox. He also — this is also in the FBI report — he also let people know with whom he was dealing. I don’t know how he dealt with the Wikileaks and the mechanism but he also… The word was passed according to the NSA report, “I also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems.” Okay. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know whether he…

Anyway, Wikileaks got access, and before he was killed.”

        According to Hersh it was Seth Rich, not Russia, who was the source of the leak. He claims that Seth who obtained the files and communicated with Wikileaks about publishing them. Hersh gives us an explanation of how the data passed from the DNC servers to Wikileaks. He explains that Seth got a hold of the data, what he did with it in the interim period before passing it to Wikileaks, and how it ultimately made into their hands. Hersh implies that Seth utilized the access he had as an employee of the DNC to first get his hand on the data; in other words, this was not the result of a remotely executed hack at all, but instead an internal leak from within the DNC itself.  He goes on to state that Seth uploaded the files to a password protected Dropbox. For those of you unfamiliar, Dropbox is an online service that allows users to upload files and store a copy of them digitally on the internet. This allows the files to be accessed by anyone who has a copy of the link and, if it is set up to be protected by one, the password. With this program files can be shared (or backed up) in a common location. When uploaded the files can still be saved on the original physical location, like a laptop’s hard drive or a thumb drive, but they are also kept on Dropbox’s web accessible servers. It is the same basic concept utilized by Google Drive or Apple’s iCloud. Storing files this way makes them much more permanent than if they were just stored locally, and also makes them much easier to share with others. Unless the files somehow got removed from Dropbox’s own servers, they would remain available to anyone who in possession of the link and the password. This would mean that the files were not sent over in bulk as an email attachment (apart from samples) and they were not physically transferred (i.e. sticking a loaded flash drive in an envelope and sending it in the mail). They were uploaded to a shared location on the internet and only accessed by Wikileaks once they obtained the password.

        Having a detailed description of how the data was handled and transferred to Wikileaks is helpful because it allows us to see if what he claims matches up with the forensic evidence and the other established facts of the case. There are two general ways we can approach the verification attempt for this claim. One way would be to positively affirm it. To do this we could see if there was evidence that these files were obtained locally (as in physically copied within the DNC itself), we could demonstrate that Seth was in communication with Wikileaks, or maybe we could show that the DNC seemed to suspect Seth of having sensitive data. The other avenue would be to disaffirm the alternate explanation. That would mean showing that it was not Russia who was responsible. We could go about this by looking for indications that Russia was not responsible for the leaks. This could come from contradictions in the official story or incongruities in the forensic data. It could also come from analyzing actions the DNC took that are inconsistent with a genuine response to the intrusive cyber-attack of a hostile foreign power.

I am ultimately going to take both approaches in this analysis. I want to start by dismantling the official story and showing that Russia was not responsible. I want to show, in no uncertain terms, that they were not behind the initial security breach and they had nothing to do with getting the data to Wikileaks. Put simply, I will first show that Russia is being falsely accused and used as a scapegoat. If that can be clearly established a different question naturally arises; if it wasn’t Russia, then who was it? I believe getting to this question is going to be essential if we hope to reach a conclusion that we can be confident in and that explains all the facts. In this chapter we take down the official “it was Russia” story, and in the next we will prove how it really went down.

Julian Assange

        As we know, the DNC emails were given to and published by the news organization “Wikileaks”. WikiLeaks founder, a man named Julian Assange, has weighed in on the question of the source’s identity multiple times. Keep in mind that WikiLeaks received the emails directly from a source. There is absolutely no question that they know who they got them from. Assange has been quite clear about who the source was not, he has been less clear about who it was (although he has heavily hinted). So what has Assange said publicly about this? In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity in January 2017…

Host Sean Hannity: “Can you say to the American people unequivocally that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails — can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia . . . “
Julian Assange: “Yes.”
Hannity: “. . . or anybody associated with Russia?”
Assange: “We — we can say and we have said repeatedly . . . “
Hannity: “Right.”
Assange: “. . . over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”

This is not an isolated comment either, as he mentioned, he has made this same statement multiple times in public interviews. Every time the answer is the same, he unambiguously denies that he received the emails through Russia and instead claims they were from a leak (i.e. someone inside the DNC).

He has also echoed a sentiment that I will cover in this chapter. He explains that it’s possible Russia, or other foreign governments, very well may have gained access to the DNC’s servers at some point in time, but that this is not proof they had anything to do with the DNC emails being leak. It is certainly possible that multiple actors may have, at some point, gained access to the DNC’s servers and poked around a bit. This doesn’t mean they were the ones responsible for exfiltrating the batches of emails that were later published by Wikileaks. In an interview given on August 6th 2016 Assange said the following…

Assange: “Has at least one state actor hacked the DNC? Probably. Now this is a separate question to the release of our emails. So in the US media there has been a deliberate conflation between DNC leaks, which is what we’ve been publishing, and DNC hacks of the US democratic party, which have occurred over the last two years by their own admission.”

        Keep Assange’s point in mind when we look at the supposed evidence. They spend a lot of time trying to prove that there were hackers penetrating the defenses of the DNC and accessing their servers. That is not particularly shocking and does not prove they had anything to do with leaking the DNC emails. Even if they do show a breach, do they have proof that those behind the accounts were doing so at the direction of Russia? More importantly, do they provide proof that any of the hackers were responsible for copying the data that contained the DNC email files? Do not lose sight of this, it is easy to get lost when examining digital forensic evidence that is unfamiliar to most of us.  

        There isn’t much else to say about WikiLeaks position on the matter. They were as clear and straight forward as you could be. They have said it unambiguously and repeatedly, Russia was not our source and our information came from an internal leak, not an external hack. This has been WikiLeaks position from day one and it has not changed. It is possible that Assange is lying, the position almost all official sources take, and this has been used by many to simply ignore his repeated denials that Russia was involved. While not definitive it is certainly worth mentioning, and it is evidence that counters the “Russian hack” hypothesis.

The DNC        

For now, let’s start by looking the behavior of the DNC; how did they respond to this historic act of aggression? How did they respond to what they claim was a blatant attempt to interfere in our democratic process by a hostile foreign government? I have already briefly detailed the course of action they chose when I talked about the flimsy and suspect decision-making surrounding the forensic evaluation of their servers, but the time has come to take a closer look at the whole affair. A higher level of scrutiny is called for because I am going to show that, despite their claims, they did not act in a manner consistent with what they claimed transpired. They did not act like a political organization that believed they had just been hacked by a hostile foreign power. In fact, they acted much more like an organization that had something to hide. They acted like an organization desperate to find a scapegoat that they could pin everything on (regardless of actual guilt). In the harshest interpretation of their actions, one that I believe to be accurate, they appear to be an organization that was scrambling to create a false trail of evidence, a false trail that they could later use to falsely accuse several innocent parties. To put it more simply, it looks like they did everything in their power to frame the Russian government and also implicate the Trump campaign. But before going over what steps they actually took in response, let’s consider briefly how an organization acting in good faith would behave if what they claimed was true.  What would have been the appropriate reaction if they really had just suffered a massive security breach with far reaching ramifications to both an upcoming presidential election and to national security?

Firstly, at the first sign of an intrusion they would have implemented counter measures to shut down future access. If they truly had identified the nature of the vulnerability the first logical step would be to address the inadequacy in their defenses in order to stop the damage and prevent any further unwarranted access. Once the security could be ensured, they would likely report the event to the FBI, the CIA. Understanding that it would probably not be clear immediately who was responsible, they would have given the appropriate Federal authorities, the NSA, FBI, CIA, etc, access to their serves to do a thorough evaluation. This would be necessary so that the appropriate Federal authorities could ensure a proper counter response was taken against whoever was the intruder/offending party and so that they could provide their expert cyber security advice to minimize future damage. If they truly feared that it was a foreign government who compromised their servers and gained possession of their sensitive internal communications, involving our own Federal Government would not only be the responsible thing to do for the sake of the Country, but it would be in their own self-interest. On a related note, how would they have handled the Seth Rich murder investigation? If they had absolutely no doubt he was not connected to the leaks, they would have wanted police to solve the case expediently and without hindrance. Not only would they want to get justice for the family and for Seth, but in they would have had a political interest in putting to bed any rumors that would surely crop up. The best way to do this would be by police apprehending the real killers as quickly as possible. Let’s keep this reasonable path forward we have laid out in mind when we go over what the DNC actually did in the real world.

CROWDSTRIKE

Shortly after it was announced that Julian Assange would be releasing DNC related emails the DNC began working with a company called Crowdstrike to control the optics of the situation. Crowdstrike came into their new role when they were hired by the law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of the DNC. Perkins Coie was heavily involved in another key event that led to the creation of the Russian collusion narrative as they were also behind the hiring of Fusion GPS for the Clinton team. Fusion GPS was a political opposition research firm that would become a household name for producing the Steele Dossier, a dossier of unverified memos that accused Trump of illegally working with Russia to undermine the election. It was complete garbage, but it took several years for that to become clear with any degree of certainty. So Crowdstrike is brought into things by the law firm that was working behind the scenes to create the Russian interference narrative. This begs the question, was Crowdstrike hired to act as a cybersecurity firm, or where they hired to help carry out a political hit job by feeding the Russian collusion hoax? Whatever the intention behind bring Crowdstrike in truly was the DNC would rely entirely on this company to handle their response to their security issues. The DNC would take this to the extreme when the made the decision to deny the federal government access to their servers. It might be hard to believe, but the US Goverment was not allowed to help them reach a conclusion, not allowed to analyze any network data, in fact they not allowed anywhere near the DNC servers for any reason at all. What the DNC choose to do instead was have the private company Crowdstrike to do all of these things on their own. The issues with this should be obvious, this company was being paid by the DNC to determine who had hacked them. They had no accountability to the public, they had no obligation to remain unbiased, and there was quite clearly a conflict of interest by the mere fact that the DNC was paying them. Crowdstrike’s future contracts with the DNC and their business livelihood in general was connected to whether or not the DNC was happy with the conclusions of their report.

Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity technology company officially based out of California. However, when looking at the leadership we start to see international connections that raise eyebrows, as well as questions of impartiality. We start to see that Crowdstrike has conflicts of interest well beyond just being paid by the DNC to do this report. One glaring example is who their co-founder and CTO was at the time of the assessment. His name was Dimitri Alperovitch, and he had some suspect associations. Specifically, Alperovitch was a “nonresident senior fellow in cybersecurity” at the Atlantic Council. This information is published on their own website. Why does his position at the Atlantic Council call into question the ability for his company to be impartial when it comes to the DNC server analysis? Well it seems that the Atlantic Council has a strong anti-Russian political position and mission. To put it simply, the man in charge of the private company that claimed Russia hacked the DNC, Crowdstrike, was on the board of a think tank that was heavily involved in anti-Russian politics. For example, the Atlantic Council had something called a “Ukraine in Europe Initiative,” that was supposed to “galvanize international support for an independent Ukraine within secure borders whose people will determine their own future.” For those of us not well versed in Ukrainian politics, they are referring to “independence” and “secure borders” from Russia. This will not be the last time the Atlantic Council crops up when it comes to the creation and propagation of the Russian collusion narrative, but for now let’s leave it at that. Crowdstrike has some serious credibility issues itself and combined with the inappropriate position the DNC put them in anything they claim should be met with serious skepticism. Why would the DNC take this course of action if they legitimately thought Russia was behind the hack and leak?

Unsurprisingly, when Crowdstrike issued their report they concluded that Russia was behind the hack. In order to prove that Russia had been responsible for the hack and theft of the emails. They outlined the supposed activity of various breaches carried out by accounts they claimed where linked to Russia. However, it is painfully obvious that the reaction of the DNC does not match up with this story.  The DNC claims that it first learned of unidentified intrusions into their servers on April 29th, 2016. Crowdstrike claims that they first identified Russian intrusions into the server on May 6, 2016 when they were able to identify two different hackers. The first was named Cozy Bear, who according to Crowdstrike was linked to the Russian FSB (Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service) and second named Fancy Bear, who they claimed was connected to the Russian GRU, (Russian Military Intelligence Organization). If they really detected these intruders in their server, and they really believed they were agents of Russian Intelligence, surely they would have taken every appropriate measure to shut down the breach and spent no expense closing the vulnerabilities in their system that had allowed there entry in the first place?

Perhaps unsurprisingly they did not do any of these things. Instead of this obvious and clear course of action, they instead did absolutely nothing to address or stop the supposed security failures. Crowdstrike claims, in an utterly silly and nonsensical explanation, that they purposefully choose inaction in order to prevent the “Russians” from realizing they had been detected. This is such an utterly pathetic excuse for their inconsistent behavior that it truly is an insult to the average American’s intelligence that they thought people would accept this. The last email taken from the DNC server was on May 25th 2016, yet was not until June 10th that they put in place any sort of counter measure by replacing all the software on all of the DNCs computers. We are supposed to believe that they had knowledge of this massive breach in security for an entire 45 days before they took a solitary step towards stopping it. This is simply not logical or believable. The actions they took, or did not take, are only realistically explained by ignorance. There are only two options that make sense here. The first is that they were not aware of any of the data breaches until they went back and looked after the fact. The other is that they did suspect that there was a leak, but they suspected it was carried out internally by someone who had access to the data, making any additional security measures meaningless.

         The US intelligence community had an overwhelming amount of reasons to be skeptical of Crowdstrike’s conclusions. Their theories were absolutely riddled with factual issues and devoid of any real evidence. Government officials of any kind were simply refused any access to the servers themselves. Crowdstrike’s security reaction was clearly not remotely consistent with the story they ultimately told. There were several obvious and significant conflicts of interest that Crowdstrike had when it came to reaching a determination. The intel agencies themselves were not able to verify anything independently, they were simply expected to take the word of this private company. It is worse than them simply not being able to independently verify the information, they were not even given all of the information in the first place. This is because instead of receiving access to the entirety of Crowdstrike’s report, they given only a redacted copy of the actual assessment. To this day no US Government agency has ever been allowed to examine the DNC servers for any purpose. In fact, no organization other than Crowdstrike has ever examined the servers firsthand. Yet despite all of this the conclusions that Crowdstrike reached were taken as gospel by the US intelligence community. In fact, the intelligence community used these shoddy conclusions as a pretext to push the narrative for years to come that they knew, with a high degree of confidence, that Russia was the culprit. This declaration eventually become the foundation for one of the largest political investigations ever seen in the history of our country’s history.

The 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)

Crowdstrike, despite their deceptive report, lack of evidence, and inaccurate conclusions, was still only a private company at the end of the day. They had no ability to arrest anyone based off their report, they had no ability to launch a criminal probe or obtain surveillance warrants, no power to compel testimony or subpoena records. They did not have the ability to do much of anything other than sway public opinion, not directly at least. However, all these things ended up occurring as a direct result of their report. How did this come to be? Well, it would not have been possible without a fully complicit and willing US intel community. Our supposedly unbiased IC actively helped to continue the effort where Crowdstrike left off and took over as the main driving force behind the burgeoning fraud. They had no problem in continuing to push the charade that Crowdstrike had started, and they did so of their own accord. Looking to blame Russia using a unverified and biased report, that was paid for by the DNC itself, they decided to morph it into official US intelligence.

The report was utilized as the basis for four separate intel agencies, the NSA, CIA, FBI and ____ to declare that they had a “high degree of confidence”  that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election (with the exception of the NSA, who only gave a medium degree). They made this claim in the now infamous 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that was released internally in January 2017. Now, the Crowdstrike report was not the only piece of “evidence” that led to their bold conclusion that Russia had conducted a sweeping and wide-ranging campaign of election interreference. In fact, it was not even the only piece of “evidence” that the DNC had directly paid for themselves. We will cover the ICA and the evidence used to underline its conclusions in much more depth later on, but for now let’s focus on the role the ICA had in promoting the idea that Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC. The ICA is a document produced by the intel community for keeping politicians and decision makers in Washington up to date with the current views of our national intelligence apparatus It’s purpose is to brief these powerful decision makers so that the information, in theory, could be used to help guide their future decisions and interactions with foreign governments. The overall claim made in the ICA, which was completely untrue, gave the appearance that there was real evidence behind the allegations of Russian interference. It also gave the false impression that this view had come from information received through trusted channels within the established intelligence network. This apparent validation of the information led to it being echoed countless times over the next 3 plus years by a plethora of TV pundits, politicians, and even federal prosecutors, allowing them to declare that it was beyond question; Russia was responsible for election interference, and the most egregious example of that was their role in DNC email leaks.

CROWDSTRIKE’S CLAIMS

        Knowing what the Crowdstrike report was used for gives context and helps illustrate the impact it had on the country. Now that we know a bit more about the role it played in the wider Russia collusion narrative it’s time to take a hard look at the conclusions that Crowstrike made themselves.  Was the evidence they presented somehow legitimate? Were the conclusions they made public backed up by solid facts and verified evidence? Let’s take a look for ourselves, starting with an overview of what the claimed to have determined. The following question and answer style article is from their own website.

Did CrowdStrike have proof that Russia hacked the DNC? 

Yes, and this is also supported by the U.S. Intelligence community and independent Congressional reports.

Have any other organizations concluded that Russia was behind the DNC hack?

Yes. CrowdStrike’s conclusion that Russia was behind the DNC hack is supported by the U.S. Intelligence community and also by independent Congressional reports. Most recently, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report in April 2020 that validated the previous conclusions of the Intelligence Community Assessment, published on January 6, 2017, all concluding that Russia was behind the DNC data breach.

Does CrowdStrike have evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC network?

Yes. Shawn Henry stated in his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee that CrowdStrike had indicators of exfiltration (page 32)  and that data had clearly left the network. Also, on page 2, the Intelligence Community Assessment also confirmed that the Russian intelligence agency GRU “had exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC.”

(Crowdstrike.com)

        It doesn’t take a trained forensic metadata analyst to see the ridiculousness of these statements. In response to “Did Crowdstrike have proof Russia hacked the DNC?” they claim yes immediately.  Strangely, instead of simply offering this proof, they simply mention that the Intelligence Community and various Congressional committees agree with them. They fail to mention, however, that these committees and the intelligence community came to this conclusion because they had been told it was so by Crowdstrike themselves. The ridiculousness of this needs to be illustrated, it would be like the following scenario. Imagine I decided to tell my friend that I could jump 15 feet into the air. Imagine my friend never asked to see this feet, but just took my word and went around telling other people that I could jump 15 feet in the air. Pretend a skeptical observer asks me if I could prove my ridiculous claim. If I offered proof the same way Crowdstrike did, I would simply say “Yes. And I am not the only one saying this, my friend here also says I can jump 15 feet into the air too.” This is laughable, and quite frankly an embarrassing display of pure deception.  

The third question is in regard to devasting testimony that we will get into later. Notice the wordplay, they start off by claiming that they have proof Russia hacked the DNC, and when it comes time to actually get into the details, it has switches to having “evidence” and “indicators.” I am sorry, but I refuse to take their word for it, and even if I did, their opinion of what constitutes evidence or indicators is not one I trust due to their remarkable conflicts of interest and all of the other issues I have covered. This is a pathetic attempt to save their reputation after their work has been thoroughly discredited.  

Crowdstrike was also involved in pushing the idea that a hacker by the name of Guccifer 2.0 had accessed the DNC servers. Guccifer 2.0 would later go on to claim credit for the hack and become widely regarded as the cover account for Russian intelligence’s cyber operation. It wasn’t until Julian Assange went on TV and publicly announced he had emails related to the Clinton campaign, and that he was going to publish them, that Crowdstrike started making claims about Guccifer 2.0 and supposed breaches of the DNC server. In fact, the next day after Assange made this proclamation on TV two Crowdstrike employees went to the Washington Post with a story to tell. They told reporters that a hacker named Guccifer 2.0 had breached the DNC one month ago (but they hadn’t told anyone until it just then, the day after Assange goes public with what he has) . The next day the story ran, now just two days after Julian Assange’s announcement, timing that certainly seems odd, if not incredibly suspect. It certainly appears that the day after they found out the leaks had indeed made it to Wikileaks the DNC was scrambling to come up with a cover story for who the source of the leaks was, and Crowdstrike was acting as their messenger.

        Guccifer 2.0 would later go on to claim full responsibility for the “Hack.” He would post supposed proof, emails that he said came from the server. Analysis of Guccifer’s communications seemed to almost clumsily tie him to Russia, accidental exposure of his Russian IP in emails to the press, Russian characters were found, and Russian metadata was embedded in his online activity. He posted supposed communications with Wikileaks of him sending documents. Today the official government position is that Guccifer 2.0 was responsible for the hacking of the DNC, and for sending the emails to Wikileaks. They claim Guccifer 2.0 was a front used by the Russian GRU (their foreign military-intelligence agency) and carried out under express orders from the Kremlin. It should come as no surprise that this accusation does not hold up to even the slightest levels of scrutiny. The story they came up with did not take long to fall apart and completely collapse.

Bill Binney

One of the first major blows to the credibility of the Crowdstrike report and the idea that Guccifer 2.0 was responsible for the leaked emails came in August of 2017. A group of retired intelligence analysts had reviewed the Crowdstrike report and published a scathing rebuttal of their conclusions. The group went by the name “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,” or VIPS for short. (15) VIPS is made up of around 30 retired, highly decorated and respected ex intelligence officials. Their published rebuttal had four chief researchers, Bill Binney (retired NSA technical director for work geopolitical and military analysis), Ed Loomis (former NSA technical director for the Office of Signal Processing), Kirk Wiebe (former senior NSA analyst) and Ray Mcgovern (former chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch for the CIA). I list their credentials not just to appeal to their authority, but to show that these are not loony conspiracy theorists. They are truly some of the most respected ex-intelligence analysts alive and they have the relevant experience and expertise needed to draw accurate conclusions from forensic data. Of particular note is Bill Binney, he is considered the father of modern metadata analysis and he has worked tirelessly for years to expose the false conclusions of Crowdstrike. They conclusions these four experts drew were damning and completely contradicted what the public had been told so far by Crowdstrike and others. I will do my best to summarize their bottom line conclusions as follows. (15)

• There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system. 

• Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source—claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative.

One of the lead researchers, Bill Binney, has continued for the better part of 3 years to expose the myth that Russia was the source of the DNC email leaks. Bill has often stated publicly that if the DOJ truly had the proof that say they do, they would be able to pinpoint when and where the hacks originated. Since this information has never been provided, he concluded that it means one thing; the scenario laid out by the IC that Russia hacked the DNC servers is not what really happened. Binney is completely qualified to make these kinds of judgements, it is not hard to find out that Bill Binney is a respected figure in NSA history and held in extremely high regard. In fact, in 2015 a documentary titled “A Good American” was made about him and his work in the IC, and his role as an NSA whistleblower as it related to 9/11. In the film several of his contemporaries in intelligence analysis are interviewed. Here is what a few of them had to say.

Kirk Wiebe (former NSA senior analyst)

“Of all the analysts I ever knew in my entire carrier, spanning US air force to my time at the NSA, Bill was by far the most astute, the most capable, accurate. He used all the tools necessary not only to find the story, but to complete it. Where we weren’t able to actually read messages, they were encrypted, Bill found ways to leverage indicators that I’d never seen anyone else do.”

Dianne Roark (Former Staffer House Intelligence Committee NSA Account)

“Bill was Mr. Externals at the NSA. He was the person who knew the most about what we know call, in the digital age, metadata. If something was encrypted and you couldn’t decrypt it, you could still get information out of the external signals, and that was Bill’s forte.”

        I include these reports to show that Binney is highly respected and well thought of. He is considered the father of modern forensic analysis by many and has a sterling reputation. He is an authoritative source on this exact topic, and he should be taken seriously.

Perhaps one the most damning piece of evidence uncovered by Bill Binney and others comes from their examination of the metadata associated with the files that WikiLeaks uploaded. He was able to show that the transfer rates of the files from the DNC servers matched that of a typical transfer to a thumb drive. Not only that, but the speeds would have been impossible to achieve through a remote hack. Skip Folden (IT director for IBM for over 30 years and consultant for FBI, DOJ, and military intelligence) concluded the same, writing…

“Transfer rates of 23 MB/s are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance. Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device.”

Examining the Wikileaks DNC files revealed that they appeared in the system format FAT. This type of format is associated with physical drives such as a USB flash drive. This reinforces the data gathered from the transfer speeds. He determined this by looking at the last modified time stamps on the Wikileaks DNC files. He noticed that they all ended with an even number. FAT file systems store dates by rounding the time up to the nearest even second. How do we know? The truth lies in the “last modified” time stamps on the Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second. This was true for all 500 of the files he analyzed, which is statistically impossible as a result of chance. The conclusion is unmistakable, the DNC leak was downloaded to a flash drive, it was not the result of a remote hack.

Shawn Henry’s Testimony

Luckily, we don’t need to rely wholly on the testimony of experts to get to the truth. The VIPS report and Bill Binney were vindicated in 2020 with the release of previously classified congressional testimony. Crowdstrike’s CEO Shawn Henry’s testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee was made public, and with it the idea that there was proof, or even “concrete data” proving Russia had exfiltrated the data containing the leaked emails out of the DNCs servers was completely and totally put to bed. The devastating admission occurred while Henry was being questioning by the Democratic Chair of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Shift. Here is the relevant portion of his testimony.

Adam Schiff: My colleague asked you whether the damage that was done to the DNC through the hack might have been mitigated had the DNC employed your services earlier. Do you know the date in which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC?

HENRY: l do. L have to just think about it. l do know. L mean, it’s in our report that I think the committee has.

MR. SCHIFF: And, to the best of your recollection, when would that have been?

MR. HENRY: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC' we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. we did not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated.

MR. SCHIFF: And the indicators that it was exfiltrated, when does it indicate that would have taken place?

MR. HENRY: Again, it's in the report. I believe -- I believe it was April of 2016. I’m confused on the date. I think it was April, but it's in the report.

MR. SCHIFF: lt provides in the report on 2016, April 22nd, data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor.

MR.HENRY: Yes, sir. So that, again, staged for, which, l mean, there’s not -- the analogy I used with Mr. Stewart earlier was we don't have video of it happening, but there are indicators that it happened. There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left. 

There isn’t much room for interpretation when it comes to this testimony. The evidence that has been passed off as proof that Russia was responsible for the DNC leaks is completely and utterly nonexistent. It is clear that the forensic data that supposedly implicates Russia is purely circumstantial.  The testimony of the CEO of Crowdstrike himself proves that they have absolutely no proof to even show the data was ever exfiltrated from the server remotely. The entire narrative is built on shoddy evidence, political bias, corruption, and deception. In fact, it gets worse than that; it appears that the “Russian hackers” may have actually been entirely fabricated by western intelligence assets in order to frame Russia. Now, this claim may seem surprising, but it fits into a surprisingly consistent pattern when we examine the wider collection of evidence used to support the theory of Trump-Russia collusion. We will see this almost every single time a “Russian” is cited attempting to make inroads into the Trump campaign. In almost every example the evidence does not point to these characters being Russian agents at all, and in fact appear to be western intelligence assets simply posing as Russian agents. Put simply it seem that a western intelligence agency, or group of agencies, was trying to frame the Trump team by sending fake Russians in to meet with campaign staff. I understand that this sounds hard to believe, but please hold your skepticism. I will prove it to you later with multiple examples of this happening.

Guccifer 2.0

For now, let’s examine the supposed “Russian hacker” that was blamed for leaks, Guccifer 2.0, and see what the evidence tells us. Suspiciously, Guccifer 2.0 does not appear on the scene until immediately after Julian Assange publicly announces that he has emails from the DNC and that he is going to make them public. This is a key piece of information to keep in mind. If Guccifer 2.0 really was a western asset created as a cover story it certainly fits that all of the associated activity with this “hacker” would start the day after it becomes clear Wikileaks has the goods. Keep the timing in mind as we go over the following series of events.

Remember the odd timing surrounding the first mention of Russian hackers by Crowdstrike? Guccifer 2.0 was first mentioned publicly in an article published by the Washington Post that claimed Guccifer 2.0 had hacked the DNC a month or so prior to the publication of the article. This was according to two Crowdstrike employees who were cited as the source for the information. Recall that this article was published on June 14th, 2016, just two days after Julian Assange publicly announced that he had emails associated with the DNC. While they claimed the hack had occurred one month prior to the article the Crowdstrike sources only told the Washington Post about it the day before the publication. This was only one day after Assange’s announcement. The timing of this is incredibly suspect, and it certainly appears that the DNC was scrambling to come up with a cover story for who the source was the day after they found out the leaks had indeed made it to Wikileaks.

Coincidentally (or not), the next day (on June 15th) “Guccifer 2.0” created a blog post in which he claimed to have hacked the DNC. The digital footprints he left have been cited as proof that it was a Russian operation run by the GRU, however the evidence appears much more like a clumsy and heavy-handed attempt to make Guccifer appear Russian. For example, Guccifer used a program to hide the IP address he/they used, yet emails were sent to the press with a service (AOL.fr) that exposed the true IP address of the sender. The result was members of the press receiving emails from Guccifer stamped with Russian IP addresses. This is suspect in itself; would a Russian intelligence operation really be so careless as to use a program that exposes their IP address when interacting with the press? In an indictment against the Russian GRU we later learned that Guccifer 2.0 searched several terms that would appear in his blog post. Oddly enough, he made these searches in English. Why would Russian intelligence search for terms in English and not Russian? This was also supposedly done through a proxy server that was located in Moscow. For those of us who are not particularly technically savvy, when using a proxy server, all of your incoming and outgoing internet traffic is routed through the “proxy server” before reaching its final destination. This can be used to hide your location because anyone analyzing your activity will see the IP address of the proxy server instead of your own IP address. This also make no sense, if the GRU had gone through the trouble to use a different server in order to cover their tracks, do you really think they would pick one that was located in Moscow? Either the GRU is a completely inept and incompetent agency (they’re not) or someone was trying to tie the Guccifer account to Russia.  

It doesn’t end there, there are plenty more examples that the entire Guccifer 2.0 persona matches up much more closely to a western intelligence asset than a Russian one. Here are several key points listed in an article by “Adam Carter” (likely a pseudonym) that lead an honest observer to conclude that Guccifer 2.0 was being purposefully crafted in order to make it appear Russian in origin. (18)

• Guccifer posted emails that he claimed came from the DNC. It turned out that they were actually from DNC employee John Podesta’s Gmail account.
• “In early 2017 it was discovered that the Russian metadata left behind in Guccifer 2.0’s first batch of documents came about due to an unusual and deliberate construction process inconsistent with someone accidentally mishandling documents”
• Several email exchanges with reporters contained timestamps. When examining these timestamps, we see that whoever Guccifer 2.0 was, there local time was set up to be in Central US time.
• Evidence implies that on July 6, 2016 Guccifer 2.0 edited documents while Eastern US time zone settings were in effect on the device he was using.
• Several other examples clearly indicate that Guccifer 2.0 was operating within US time zones.

The odd timing of when he appeared on the scene, his bizarre and amateur “mistakes” that make him appear Russian, the crafted and combined with all of these indicators appear that it’s likely Guccifer 2.0 was actually a western intelligence operation designed to appear Russian in order for them to have a scapegoat to blame for the DNC leaks. One thing is for certain, there is zero hard evidence, at all, that anyone in Russia, let alone the Russian government, was responsible for the DNC email leaks. In fact, judging by the transfer speeds, we can confidentially say that it was an internal leak transferred to a flash drive. Overall, it seems that it is much more likely that Guccifer 2.0 was a western asset acting like a Russian one. If this seems farfetched, remember that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the “Russian lawyer” and her crew of Fusion GPS connected associates, had met with Glenn Simpson before and after the Trump Tower meeting and were clearly set up to appear as if they were Russian assets. Recall that Joseph Misfud, the man who first allegedly told George Papadopoulos about the Russians having dirt on Clinton, had done so on behalf of western intelligence interests according to his own lawyer. Remember as well that the people who tried to pull the same information out from Papadopoulos, Alexander Downer, Stefan Halper, and Azra Turk, were all FBI assets. Halper had also reached out to Carter Page and Sam Clovis, members of the Trump Campaign. Is it really so far fetched to imagine them doing this again?

If the leak came from within the DNC itself and was not a hack, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to determine that Seth Rich is the most likely suspect. His laptop was taken and examined by the FBI, he was murdered just before the emails were released, and he worked at the DNC as a data analyst. It also appears that, despite what the entire mainstream media and the intelligence communities claim, there is no solid evidence that Russia was responsible for remotely obtaining these emails. The forensic data is entirely in line with the scenario laid out by Hersh in which Seth Rich obtained the emails locally. Further, we can conclude that the Guccifer 2.0 persona was probably a cover story created by western intelligence agencies to bolster the claims that Russia was responsible.

Overall, when we look at the totality of the evidence there is little doubt remaining that the official story could not possibly be true. Assange himself denies that Russia was responsible. The DNC’s behavior does not match up with the story they tell. The supposed proof comes from the deeply conflicted company Crowdstrike, yet the never let the government double their work or examine anything on the servers themselves. The government also never saw the full report because their copy from Crowdstrike was redacted. The evidence in the report itself does not prove what they say it does, experts like Bill Binney have picked it apart and shown it actually proves the leak was local. Any connection to Russia is weak is best and fabricated at worse. To top it all off, Crowdstrike CEO Shawn Henry admitted in front of congress that they never had any proof Russia was behind the theft of the emails. With all this in mind we can confidently say that there is absolutely no proof that Russia was behind the leaks and in fact most of the evidence points away from them. It can be said with certainty that the official story is not true and is clearly ruled out by the evidence. In fact, the evidence clearly points to a different scenario, and one that lines up with Hersh’s version of the story; the emails were through a local and internal leak.

Chapter 8 – The Inside Job

        In the previous chapter we started our examination into another claim Hersh is heard making on tape. He says that Seth Rich took the emails from the DNC by leaking them internally and then started negotiating a deal to sell the content to Wikileaks. This is really the central premise and possibly the most important claim Hersh makes. This really is the key point, if we can prove that he is correct and Seth was the source of the DNC email leaks then we have our starting point. We would have proof that we had been lied to as a country for over 3 years, lied to about something that ended up having massive political ramifications. Seth’s murder becomes much more suspicious if we know he was the one with the emails. The significance of this claim is the reason I am taking a deep dive into it and using as many sources as possible to corroborate it. It is worth taking the time, really paying attention and following along closely because I am going to take a look at this claim from every possible angle. It will allow us to understand the full story and we will be able to see the big picture associated with this claim. I am taking the time to do this right so that when we do finally arrive at a conclusion it is one that we can have complete confidence in. Here are Hersh’s own words one more time so that they are fresh in your mind.

“So, and the same morning they call in the feds. The feds get through and here’s what they find. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is he makes contact.

First of all, you have to know some basic facts. One of the basic facts is that there are no DNC or Podesta emails that exist beyond May 21st or 22nd, the last email from either one of those groups.

And so what the report says is that sometime in late spring/early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks. That’s in his computer, and he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian ten twelve years… I stay the f*** away from people like that. You know, he’s invited me, when I’m in London I always get a message, “Come see me at the Ecuadorian embassy.” Fuck you, I ain’t going there. I got enough trouble without getting photographed. He’s under total surveillance by everybody.

Anyway, they found what he had done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails, some juicy emails from the DNC. And you know, by the way all this shit about the DNC, you know, whatever happened the democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean. All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I’m sure dozens of emails, and said, “I want money.”

Then later Wikileaks did get the password. He had a DropBox — a protected DropBox — which isn’t hard to do. I mean you don’t have to be an IT wizard. He was certainly, he was not a dumb kid.

They got access to the DropBox. He also — this is also in the FBI report — he also let people know with whom he was dealing. I don’t know how he dealt with the Wikileaks and the mechanism but he also… The word was passed according to the NSA report, “I also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems.” Okay. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know whether he…

Anyway, Wikileaks got access, and before he was killed.”

        Last chapter I started the verification process of this claim by decimating the official story. I was able to show that despite what proponents of the official story want you to believe there is absolutely no proof that Russia was to blame for the DNC leaks. The idea that this is a settled matter is completely and demonstrably false. In fact, a careful examination of the digital forensic evidence shows that the leaks could not possibly have come from a Russia hack. Instead it shows that it was a local transfer onto a flash drive. This falls in line with what Assange himself has said and it also explains the bizarre and suspicious behavior of the DNC throughout this whole ordeal.  When all of this information is viewed  together it conclusively demonstrates that the DNC emails were not taken from the server by a Russian hack but instead came from someone inside the DNC leaking them. We now know for certain that this case did not play out the way we’ve been told it did. But this is only part of the puzzle, we’re still faced with trying to determine what did happen and why. Let’s see what evidence we can find that Seth Rich was the source of the emails. Verifying this claim would go a long way towards proving that the Hersh tape is authentic and that what he lays out is a true and accurate account of what happened.

We can go about this a few different ways. Recall that we covered a few different elements of the case that seemed to be completely at odds with “Russia hack” narrative?  Well it’s worth reexamining these under the presumption that Seth Rich was the source and seeing if they make more sense than they did before. For example, will the scenario be corroborated, instead of refuted, by the forensic evidence? Does the nonexistent security response of the DNC-Crowdstrike team make more sense if we assume this was never about external hacks? Does their refusal to allow the government to verify the report or look at the servers and their animosity towards the Seth Rich investigators make sense if Seth was the source? These are all recorded facts and no amount of ignoring them will change that. If we are ever going to get to the real truth and be confident in our conclusion, we will need to make sure that it accounts for the presence of these apparent inconsistencies. IF a possibility being considering is actually what happened, it is the truth, then what happens in response will be logically consistent and not contradictory and impossible.

Every example given in the in the previous paragraph’s questions contradicts the idea that Russia was behind the leaks. Are the they consistent with a leak from Seth Rich, the scenario Hersh laid out? Let’s take a look. The forensic evidence, one of the main reasons we know it was not Russia, points to the files being downloaded locally to a thumb drive, and the files themselves contain proof that they were stored on a thumb drive. It’s not only not at odds with the forensic evidence, it is literally the exact that that it described. This is 100% consistent. What about the lack of a security response by the DNC and Crowdstrike? The idea that they really found Russian actors making unauthorized access to the servers when they claimed is called into serious question by the fact that they took zero countermeasures to tighten security and to mitigate damage. It wasn’t until Wikileaks publicly stated that they’d received the emails and were going to publish them that they mentioned this supposed Russian security breach. This only explanation I see that explains all of the odd behavior is the following one; the DNC suspected that Seth had copied a large number of damaging emails to a flash drive using his DNC employee access. They knew it was a local inside job and not a remote hack, so they had no reason to address any security concerns with the network itself, and their efforts to mitigate further damage involved interacting with Seth Rich in an effort to either stop him from publishing what he had or somehow destroying the data he had taken. His death led them to believe this endeavor had been successful, so they had no need to start a PR campaign designed to find a scapegoat until they learned that Seth had been successful at getting the emails to Wikileaks. This is when they decided a PR campaign to shift blame to Russia was necessary. We see evidence that this is indeed what happened, because the very next day two Crowdstrike employees went and told the Washington Post that they had seen Russians in the DNC servers just one month ago.

If it was Seth Rich who first copied the emails, the motivation that the DNC had to keep all government officials out of the servers makes a lot more sense. They did not want the federal government to be able to prove that it was a locally transferred leak and not a Russian led hack. If they discovered Seth Rich had logged in just before the data left, they might start asking questions about who had killed him. They are also subject to a level of scrutiny that private corporations aren’t, they are subject to FOIA requests, they are required by law to preserve notes and all communications that involve government work, they are subject to internal reviews via the inspector general system, and they wouldn’t be able to control who had access to the conclusions. If it truly was Russia who had hacked the DNC none of these factors would matter. They only come into play if they have something to hide, and it seems likely that that something is the fact that Seth Rich was behind the emails getting stolen. If Seth was responsible, then the DNC’s harassment of Private Investigator Rod Wheeler suddenly makes sense. If Seth was really murdered in a totally unconnected and random event it wouldn’t make sense to get in the way of those looking for the truth. They would want to have the culprits held accountable, they would want closure for them and for Seth’s family, and they would want to squash any rumors that would clearly starts popping up given Seth’s job at the DNC. Yet instead Donna Brazille was called and told the DC Police flat out that they were not to cooperate with Rod Wheeler. She made an angry and threatening phone call to the Rich family, interrogating them about why this PI was “snooping around.” The only motivation she, and the DNC, would have to behave this way was that they were afraid of what an unimpeded and thorough investigation might turn up. It would certainly prove that Seth Rich was the source of the emails and that he had gotten them to Wikileaks. It might also prove something worse, that whoever killed Seth might have been motivated by a desire to silence him and stop the data from being released publicly.

        It turns out every single question we had when we were working under the premise that Russia was responsible is answered simply by instead supposing that Seth Rich was.  They have each been given reasonable explanations under this circumstance and show quite clearly which scenario seems more likely. One is inconsistent with what we actually see going on with the case, the forensic evidence, and the actions of primary characters in this story. One fits perfectly with them, and in fact is pointed to directly. An Intellectually honest evaluation would find enough solid information here to conclude that Seth Rich was indeed responsible for the DNC email theft.

        It is necessary to find proof that doesn’t require intellectual honesty or a thorough and honest evaluation of the facts for those people who refuse to come into this with an open mind. Frankly it’s become obvious that most people, especially reporters and media pundits, do not have any interest in being fair minded or objective. When it comes to the Russian collusion narrative anything that does not paint Trump and Russia in bed together is dismissed as a conspiracy theory. It is sad that so called journalists refuse to look at the evidence even though it obviously proves them overwhelmingly wrong. Luckily for us there is evidence out there that doesn’t require much thought to understand and it comes from a familiar source.

Ellen Ratner

        One of the most reliable and consistent sources of new information regarding the Seth Rich case is the ongoing legal war between Mr. Ed Butowsky and those who attacked his credibility and character for his role reporting on Seth Rich. The lawsuit that we are going to look at in this situation is against a conglomerate of media groups, including high profile names such as Turner Broadcasting System INC, Anderson Cooper, Vox Media, The New York Times, and several others.

“45. Mr. Butowsky stumbled into the RCH (Russian collusion hoax) crosshairs after Ellen Ratner, a news analyst for Fox News and the White House correspondent for Talk Media News, contacted him in the Fall of 2016 about a meeting she had with Mr. Assange. Ms. Ratner's brother, the late Michael Ratner, was an attorney who had represented Mr. Assange. According to Ms. Ratner, she made a stop in London during a return flight from Berlin, and she met with Mr. Assange for approximately six hours in the Ecuadorean embassy. Ms. Ratner said Mr. Assange told her that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron, were responsible for releasing the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Ms. Ratner said Mr. Assange wanted the information relayed to Seth's parents, as it might explain the motive for Seth's murder.”

        This would be a stunning admission by Assange if this information in the lawsuit turns out to be accurate. The inclusion of Aaron Rich in Assange’s supposed came as a surprise to many when this was first made public. However this detail eventually added to the stories credibility by explaining otherwise inconsistent elements of the case. We will take a deeper look at Aaron’s alleged role later on in this book, but it seems to point to this being genuine. Another aspect that made it plausible was Ellen Ratner’s connection to Assange. Ellen was a Fox News analyst in 2016 and had worked in the Journalism industry for years prior; her experience included serving as the Bureau Chief for Talk Media News as well as a stint working as a White House correspondent. She also had a personal connection to Assange through her late brother Michael Ratner. Michael was actively representing Assange as a human rights attorney at the time of his death. These facts make the claim interesting at least, but just because something is written in a lawsuit doesn’t make it true. We will need to find corroborating evidence before putting too much faith into this.

To start, is there any indication that Assange would have even had an opportunity to divulge this information to Ratner? Despite having personal connections with Ratner Assange had been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since 2012 under the Ecuadorian government’s protection of diplomatic immunity.  This was granted to him in order to shield him from what many believe were politically motivated attempts to prosecute him unjustly. While this helped keep him out jail it also forced him to remain inside the facility at all times, drastically limiting his ability to interact with others. Knowing this, how would he have had the chance to tell Ratner this key detail of the case? Ratner provided the answer to this question a few days after Trump had won the 2016 election. The day after the race took place, she participated in a speaking event hosted by Embry Riddle University. The speaker’s series was an ongoing event that the University hosted and subsequently posted online. The November 2016 entry featured Ellen Ratner and Fox political analyst and former Congressman John Leboutillie and had them discuss the aftermath of the Trump’s recent Presidential victory the overall political environment in America at the time. At one point the conversation turned to the topic of WikiLeaks and the DNC email leak. It is at this point when Ellen made the following comments.

Ratner: “I spent 3 hours with Julian Assange on Saturday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London –“

John LeBoutillier (interrupting her to address the audience): “Get this, listen to this!” (to Ratner) “Go ahead”  

Ratner: “Well I did. One of the things he did say was that the leaks were not from, uh, they were not from Russia they were an internal source, uh, from the Hillary campaign or someone, somebody that knew Hillary, an enemy. He does not think they’re from Russia and he says that the Russians got credit for something Wikileak’s should have gotten credit for.”

Host: “Wow, how many people thought that there was part of the party, the democratic party, that was trying to put the poison in.. because I always wondered if there were people who just secretly wanted to ruin it for her, within her own party, do you think that?”

Ratner: “Well as you said she’s been around a long time and has a lot enemies. And the enemies that he has, or had, are mainly in the real estate business. But he hasn’t been in public life so he doesn’t have the sort of… enemies that all of us would get if we were in public life.”

(

        Here we have clear and unambiguous corroboration that Ratner met with Assange and that they specifically discussed the identity of their source.  Assange told Ratner what he has told many people, that Russia was not responsible for the leaks. She also mentions that he told her that the email leak came from someone “associated with the Clinton campaign,” this person was an “internal source” and was an “enemy” of Clinton (according to what Assange told Ratner). Now we know that this is the description Assange gave to Ratner of the source, so if that source was indeed Seth Rich we can also attribute this description to him. While it is completely natural and expected for Assange to say that Seth worked at the DNC and also that he had was “associated with campaign,” it would be much more surprising, and also very interesting, to find out that Assange had referred to Seth as “an enemy” of Hilary Clinton. Do we have any idea what Assange meant by this? What might have led Assange to believe that he was her enemy, and and what happened to make him become one in the first place?

With a little analysis and some basic reasoning, we can get a pretty good idea of what Assange was likely talking about when he made these comments. We learn a little more when Ratner about exactly what sort of enemy it is that we’re talking about in this situation when she is asked if the “enemy” was a fellow member of the democratic party. She doesn’t directly answer if they were or not, but instead explains that Hilary has acquired a lot of enemies from her time in “public life.” Now it’s clear that when Ratner says “her public life,” she is actually referring to the time Hilary spent in public service or public office, these two terms would be easy to mix up and public service is a commonly  used description of government or political work. She clearly does not mean “life that takes place in the public eye” because she says that Trump did not have a history of being in “public life” before the election. Since it is incredibly common knowledge that Trump had been front and center in the public eye since he was a child she must have instead meant that he’d never been involved in “public service.” Given that Trump never held office or worked for the government in anyway prior being elected President it’s pretty easy to ascertain that this is what Ratner was talking about. Therefore, her statement tells us that the way Hilary Clinton conducted herself while in government, or while running for office, had resulted in a lot of bad blood with her contemporaries. It’s no secret that many people consider Hillary to be one of the most corrupt and unethical politicians of the modern era, so it’s not incredibly surprising to hear that she’s accumulated her fair share of enemies over the years.

The implication is that whoever was behind the leaks had become particularly disdainful towards Hillary because of something she did in an official capacity over the course of her lengthy political career. The fact that Ellen stresses the “public” aspect of public service so strongly leads me to believe that the offense was likely committed using the powers of an established leadership or governmental position. It doesn’t seem like she’s talking about a personal dispute that took place from as a result of individual differences. It sounds much more like she is describing the fallout over an unfair or unjust decision that had affected a group, or perhaps even an entire organization, of people. In order to make an attempt to identity what might have led to the creation of this particular enemy a good place, and therefore ascertain the motive behind the email leak, we should start by considering the timing of the leaks as well as the general circumstances surrounding the DNC around the time of the leaks

The fact Hilary had been out public office since 2013 makes it rather unlikely that this person’s issue with Hilary was related to anything that she did while she serving as Secretary of State for the Obama Administration. If it was a grievance held over from this time period, this person would have had to have been holding a grudge for over three years before deciding to take any kind action against Hillary. They also would have had to of wound up working for the DNC at the time of leak in been in a position that was given some sort of access to the DNC’s servers. It is certainly possible that the stars aligned, and things just happened to pan out perfectly for the source, but in all honesty it doesn’t seem very likely. If we examine Hilary’s career after she left office in 2013 we find out that the next political/governmental organization that granted her significant role in the decision-making was the DNC. If the inside source became upset with Hillary because of something she did while acting as the de facto leader of the DNC it would certainly help explain why their senior leadership was ultimately targeted by the leak.

Given what we know took place at the top of the DNC in the year or so leading up to the leak this scenario seems like a distinct possible. Recall that Assange claimed the source was associated with Clinton campaign and also that they worked at the DNC. Seth Rich fits both of these descriptions. It is an established fact that Seth worked at the DNC, but how was connected to the Clinton campaign? Assange would have had every reason to claim this claim if he was describing Seth Rich because at the time of his first contact with the source everyone working at DNC was closely connected to the Clinton campaign. In fact it’s almost meaningless to make a distinction between the two organizations because by this point in time the Clinton campaign had taken over the entire operation and was running the show. The DNC had become the primary organizational hierarchy of campaign leadership and the operational headquarters behind the Hillary Clinton campaign over an entire year before she secured the nomination of the Democratic party. The takeover began in the summer 2015 when the leadership of the DNC agreed to hand over complete control of the day to day operations to the Clinton team. In exchange they would take care of the nearly 24 million dollars in debt that had piled up during the Obama’s second Presidential Campaign.

Now that the Clinton team had control over the direction and decision making of the DNC it didn’t take long until they started acting in Hilary’s political interest above all other democrat’s, they not only sought to further her political ambitions first and foremost, but they did so at the expense of the rest of the party. This kind of takeover by one candidate before being chosen was unprecedented in modern political history and certainly made her unpopular amongst some of DNC’s pre-existing staff. It is important to note that not everyone who worked there supported Hilary’s her efforts to secure the party’s presidential nomination. Many of them preferred one other candidates, candidates who were also busy campaigning for the Democratic nomination against Hilary. The DNC was supposed to provide support and general guidance to everyone these contenders, they were not supposed favor any one candidate until that person was voted for by the base. The employees who were forced to sit and watch this happen had to have been furious with the amount of corruption they saw going on every day, and they must have been shocked to see how it was carefully from the public. There were allegations of favoritism shown towards Clinton and bias against Bernie but these were always attacked as “baseless conspiracy theories” by politicians and media pundits alike.

Knowledge of the ongoing political corruption did not become public in an official capacity until the first batch of the DNC email leaks were released. The emails showed numerous examples of how the DNC leadership was working to support Clinton above everyone else, and also examples how they had been actively conspiring to reduce support for Bernie Sanders. Sanders was actually the primary focus of the effort to derail non-Clinton presidential campaigns. The reason they felt compelled to mainly focus on the sinking Bernie Sanders campaign was a pragmatic one. Numbers from gathered from registered Democrats showed Bernie was the candidate who posed the largest threat to Hilary Clinton’s plan to secure the Democratic presidential nomination. The leadership of the DNC/Clinton team were keenly aware of the numbers that showed this and as a result waged an internal campaign to hoping to lower his popularity with voters and undermine his campaign.

It’s hard to imagine none of the employees were concerned with what they saw going on. It must have become clear at some point that their DNC, which should be the national leadership organization for the entire Democratic party, was being handed over to just one campaign. They optics weren’t great either; Clinton paid the right price and papers were signed in secret between the leaders of the campaign and DNC Chair DWS. Two years before a new president, 15 months before the party picks a contender, and Clinton’s already bringing in her people to run the show. It is distinctly possible that it was this corrupt takeover that eventually led the employee to view Clinton as an enemy. I think this has to be the case. The reason I am convinced is because the emails didn’t just hurt her, they exposed the very corruption we’re talking about. Clearly the facts point to it being the motivating factor behind the decision to leak the emails.

This would explain why Assange described Seth Rich as an enemy of Hilary Clinton. It would explain why Ratner described the issue this “enemy” had with Clinton as being political in nature. The scenario would fit the description of an inside source carrying out an internal leak, something Assange has claimed publicly and is supported by the forensic evidence. It all fits together nicely. It is pretty clear that Assange told Ratner the whole story, so it at least appears what Ed Butowsky claimed in his lawsuit is true and Assange probably did admit to Ratner that it was Seth behind the leak. All of this together simply reinforces that what Hersh said in the recording, that Seth Rich was the responsible for leaking the emails of the DNC leadership. It’s starting to get almost impossible to reasonably deny this in the face everything that we have learned so far.

Was Seth a Bernie Sanders Supporter?

        The theory that Seth became angry at Hilary’s campaign because they had rigged the primary vote against Bernie requires one key thing to be true; we need to be able to show that Seth Rich’s favored candidate was Bernie Sanders. Seeing that he was killed over four years it’s a somewhat challenging thing to find evidence for, but with the prevalence of social media in the past five years and the semi-permanent nature of posts made on online, I decided to look and see if I could dig up any of Seth’s social media history. I wasn’t able to find anything obvious, no Facebook with the name Seth Rich, no twitter account clearly marked as him, and nothing on Instagram. I was able to find posts on several different websites where the users were claiming to have found Seth’s Reddit account. The most troubling aspect was that it appeared someone was editing the posts, supposedly made by Rich, after his death.

        The first account I stumbled upon that was said to have belonged to Seth was the reddit account MeGrimlock4. MeGrimlock’s last post was in July of 2016, the same month Seth died. He also had a post that, when it was first posted, read as follows…

“Hey y’all, I don’t live in Ohama anymore so not sure the best ways to get this out, but I just got word from my folks that their dog got out. Please circulate this as much as possible. She’s a one year old brown newf named Ella. She looks like a large brown golden retriever. Shes very friendly but very hyper and will run. Please emails seth.c.rich@gmail.com and jrich121105@gmail.com with any updates.”

The post was clearly written by Seth Rich. It was made before anyone had any reason to impersonate him on the internet and was completely innocuous. Yet mysteriously the post was altered after Seth’s death on May 20th of 2017. It now reads…

“Hey y’all, I don’t live in Ohama anymore so not sure the best ways to get this out, but I just got word from my folks that their dog got out. Please circulate this as much as possible. She’s a one year old brown newf named Ella. She looks like a large brown golden retriever. She’s very friendly but very hyper and will run.”

Who might have edited this post? What were they trying to hide? It is a simple post about a missing dog, and the rest of the posts by the account are totally normal. He talks about baseball, playing poker, staying in shape, and other things a male his age would be likely to post about. In May of 2017 however, someone found this to be worth logging into and changing the post to remove the portion where he lists both his own and his father’s email. It’s worth noting that May 20th 2017 was just three days after Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel was appointed. This is certainly questionable timing, no one noticed or cared about this post until three days after the Special Counsel is formed, and this same Special Counsel goes on to blame the DNC leaks on Russia and keep the Seth Rich cover up alive? It’s certainly suspect. Another event that happened around this time; Fox News published there now retracted article that named Seth Rich as the DNC email source for Wikileaks.

Perhaps someone was worried that this account would lead people to other account’s that Seth used, accounts of a political nature. I found it reported online that Seth had used the twitter handle “@panda4progress.” This was discovered when a 2015 picture of Seth of Seth and an unknown female posing at what looks like a bar was found. In this picture the user mellissahottovy had tagged Seth as @panda4progress. No longer active, archives of the twitter account showed a headline that read “I’m just a panda who loves politics” that had sent a final tweet on Jun 28th,  2016. He had only tweeted 9 times, and the only tweet of any real significance was a retweet of a tweet by user PrattWiley that he had sent on Nov. 3rd 2015. It was a picture of a dog and said, “protecting the vote is ruff work sometimes- glad to have teddy here for backup on #Electionday.” This clearly shows that Seth was involved in securing the off-cycle U.S vote on Nov. 3rd, 2015.

Much more importantly, however, was the fact that this name led to the discovery of a new reddit account that was incredibly active in politics. It seems that Seth Rich used the account “Pandas4Bernie” when posting pro Bernie Sanders materials online. Many similarities exist between this account and the account we know Seth Rich used, MeGrimlock4. They both mentioned the user lived in D.C, they both talked about being fans of biking, and they both posted about their use of the app Split, an apparent alternative to Uber and Lyft. All of these accounts stopped posting right when Seth was murdered, with two notable and extremely suspicious exceptions.

The Pandas4Bernie account was incredibly pro-Bernie. A sampling of his posts includes the following, “We are not backing down, powerful Bernie manifesto,” another one titled “Ten Short Lessons w/ Professor Panda: How "Realistic" are Bernie Sanders' policies? [No.1],” more panda references “Pandas for Bernie - cute, shareable, informative memes re Bernie's ideas for America :)” and even an anti Hilary Clinton post titled “Hilary Clinton cries crocodile tears for Latin American immigrations.” From this user post history it’s unmistakable that they’re a diehard Sanders supporter, and there’s strong evidence that this was Seth’s account as well. The only thing that apparently contradicts this conclusion that it’s Seth’s account is a post made on May 22nd in 2017. The post was titled “Pandas4Bernie here. We are not Seth Rich, but we are Berners and we support the fight for justice.” The post goes on to explain that the account had never belonged to Seth Rich and that it had a group creation. They failed to answer why the account had stopped posting after Seth’s death until that point, this was the first, and also the last time, the account posted since Seth’s death. This post was also made on May 22nd, 2017, which was only two days after the MeGrimlock4 post had been edited to remove mention of Joel and Seth’s gmail accounts.

Through all of this social media posting some things are clear, for example Seth Rich was using the account MeGrimlock4 on Reddit, and the account panda4progress on twitter. There is little to no doubt of these two accounts. The account Pandas4Bernie was almost certainly Seth’s as well and showed that he was a diehard supporter of Bernie Sanders and that he did not like Hilary Clinton. We also know for a fact that none of these accounts were active after his death save for two incredibly suspect occasions. After lying dormant for almost an entire year after Seth’s death both Pandas4Bernie and MeGrimlock4 saw activity. This activity was the last time either account posted or edited anything, and they both occurred within days of each other. MeGrimlock4 had Seth Rich and Joel Rich’s Gmail accounts removed from the post on May 20th and two days later on May 22nd Pandas4Bernie posted that they had never been an account for Seth Rich. Interestingly two things had happened just before these changes were made that might help explain the activity. On May 16th 2017 Fox News released an article claiming that Seth had been the Wikileaks source for DNC emails, and on May 17th 2017 the Special Counsel had been appointed. It seems that one of these two events sparked someone to go online and try to cover up the tracks that Seth had left, tracks that prove he’d been a diehard Sanders supporter and had held animosity towards Hilary Clinton.

No matter who logged on and made these adjustments and for what purpose we’ve been able to find an important piece of the puzzle, Seth had been a die-hard Bernie Sanders supporter. Suddenly we have a potential motive that fits in with everything else we know already incredibly well.

The Rigged Primary: Pro-Clinton Fraud and the Sabotage of Bernie Sanders

        We’ve come along way in addressing the potential motive would have had to leak the DNC emails. We now know that whoever leaked the DNC emails, whom we have strong reason to believe was Seth Rich, did so because they were angry at Hilary for actions her campaign took while running the show at the DNC. We also know that there was a widespread effort to undermine Bernie Sander’s 2016 Democratic Primary Candidacy and that it had been carried out by Hilary Clinton and her campaign staff. Given that we now know Seth Rich was a Bernie Sanders supporter, it is a logical assumption to make that he might have learned about the activities the DNC was taking to rig the primary vote against Bernie. How extensive were these efforts? So far we have looked at examples that show there had been a schmear campaign against Bernie Sanders coming from DNC leadership. Recall the email from the DNC chief financial officer, Brad Marshall, in which he had speculated about Sander’s religious leanings, openly considering how this could to hurt Sanders among certain Democrat voting blocks. We’ve also shown how Clinton’s team was able to pay the DNC for control of the organization more than year before the Democratic National Convention took place. Yet we have not seen any examples of actual election fraud that took place during the actual process of voting, things like throwing away ballots that had been filled out by Sanders supporters after they had been turned in, stuffing the ballot boxes with fake votes for Clinton, or altering the election results to change the outcome when reporting them publicly. It is often claimed that the DNC “rigged the primary” against Sanders, but did they go about in such an overt and corrupt way that they fraudulently interfered with the election day vote taking process?

        There is certainly evidence that they did, and it is enough to make a strong case that the DNC was involved in actual election fraud; not just shady political favoritism, but legitimate vote manipulation against the Sanders campaign. The first piece of evidence that emerged to support this was a paper published the primary race on June 7th 2016 during, “Are we witnessing an honest election? A between state comparison based on voting procedures of the 2016 Democrat Party Primary for the Presidency of the United States.” The paper was written by two researchers, Axel Geijsel of Tilburg University in The Netherlands and Rodolfo Barragan of Stanford University. They claimed that they had found strong statistical evidence that showed clear signs of voter fraud, fraud that favored the Clinton campaign, in the results of the primary. They wrote…

“At present, Secretary Clinton enjoys an apparent advantage over Sanders. Is this claimed advantage legitimate? We contend that it is not, and suggest an explanation for the advantage: States that are at risk for election fraud in 2016 systematically and overwhelmingly favor Secretary Clinton. We provide converging evidence for this claim.” (A Dishonest Election)

The authors knew that some state elections in the primary had effective procedures in place for keeping track of the vote taking process. These records are able to show exactly where each vote came from that had contributed the final tally. Record keeping and transparency initiatives like this help make voting processes much more secure and result in elections that are resistant to voter fraud. Unfortunately, not all the states in the 2016 election bothered employing these techniques and had therefore would have been much more susceptible to attempts at illegally manipulating the ultimate outcome. Making matters worse for these states, if any potential issue were raised over the accuracy of the final vote tally it would be impossible look into. There would be no hard-paper trail to follow, and no way to know if the vote was counted properly or not. The paper explains that they separated the two different types of elections into groups…

“First, there are 18 states that feature voting procedures wherein the accuracy of electoral results of a primary ballot vote are backed by a paper trail.

Second, there are 13 states that do not have such a paper trail.”

The researchers keyed in on this difference and they carried out a statistical analysis comparing the election results of the states that had stricter record keeping procedures with the results from the state elections that did not to employ such safeguards. They found out that Clinton’s results were far better in the states that had used lax security procedures. This difference was enough to be considered statically significant, meaning it was not the result of chance.

​“The data shows a statistically significant difference between the groups. States

without paper trails yielded higher support for Secretary Clinton …than states with paper trails. As such, the potential for election fraud in voting procedures is strongly related to enhanced electoral outcomes for Secretary Clinton. In the

Appendix, we show that this relationship holds even above and beyond alternative explanations, including the prevailing political ideology and the changes in support over time.”

Importantly, they also found that in 2008 this discrepancy did not exist, indicating that this did not appear to be a regional difference due to voter makeup or attitude. If these states just happened to be states that disproportionality favored Clinton compared the others, this phenomenon would have had to have arisen sometime after 2008. This trend further indicated that her numbers had likely been artificially inflated by fraudulent means.

• Thus, as we did for 2016, we tabulated the percentage of delegates won in each state by (then Senator) Hillary Clinton [in 2008]. The data shows that, contrary to

the 2016 data, there is no evidence that primary states without paper trails favored Senator Clinton in 2008, P = 0.38. As such, the patterns of 2016 are different from their best point of comparison.”

The study also looked for differences between the exit polling conducted during elections and the actual outcome reported in the final results. They found that not only were Hilary’s results statistically higher than the exit polls indicated they should be, but that these differences were also more pronounced in the states without a clear paper trail recording the voting process.  

“On the overall, are the exit polls different from the final results? Yes they are. The data show lower support for Secretary Clinton in exit polls than the final results would suggest…

… While an effect size of 0.71 is quite substantial, and suggests a considerable

difference between exit polls and outcomes, we expected that this difference would be even more exaggerated in states without paper voting trails. Indeed, the effect size in states without paper voting trails is considerably larger: 1.50, and yields more exaggerated support for the Secretary in the hours following the exit polls”

Taken individually each data point could be easily ignored or shrugged off of as a fluke or attributed to some other unknown cause. However, when taken together they become much more significant. We know massive corruption existed at the DNC during this time. The same people in charge of running these primary contests had already proven to be in the tank for Clinton; they had bought control of the DNC for Clinton over a year prior and had also been caught sending emails showing a disdain for Bernie and a favoritism for Clinton. Is it really that hard to imagine they would have altered the results and engaged in voter fraud to achieve this same end? The researchers concluded that they had, and they had the data to back this up.

“As such, as a whole, these data suggest that election fraud is occurring in the 2016 Democratic Party Presidential Primary election. This fraud has overwhelmingly benefited Secretary Clinton at the expense of Senator Sanders.”

Another example of the illicit operations carried out by the DNC was revealed with the release of undercover recordings by journalism outlet Project Veritas. The recordings showed two democratic operatives, Scott Foval and Robert Creamer, detailing large scale efforts used by the DNC to manipulate elections. The majority of the video exposed that the DNC had tasked them to hurt Trump’s image by sending in fake Trump supporters to his campaign events. These fake Trump voters would then cause havoc, yell racist remarks, and even assault minorities. The trick was designed to create footage for newsrooms around the country to air that could be used to paint Trump supporters as racist and violent extremists. The video also touched on how they went about carrying out actual election fraud on a large scale. In an NPR report about the tape, they described it this way…

“Project Veritas, which has carried out several damaging video sting operations, has posted videos in recent days purporting to show Democratic operatives bragging about inciting violence at Trump's campaign events, and appearing to detail how they could bus out-of-state supporters in to commit voter fraud.

…

Unaware that he was being recorded by a hidden camera, Foval appeared to walk through how operatives could commit voter fraud by shipping in out-of-state people to vote. "You can prove conspiracy if there's a bus," he says at one point. "If there are cars, it's much harder to prove."

On the tape, Foval admitted that the practice of bussing people in to illegally vote had been going for over 50 years by the Democrats, and added that “we’re not going to stop now.”

Foval, and Creamer, (the other operatives caught on camera) ended up having to leave their active roles after the tape was released. Foval was working for Americans United for Change at the time but was fired for his statements after the tape’s release. Creamer had worked for Democracy Partners, after the tape came out, he agreed to voluntarily step down. The NPR article confirmed that both originations had done political work for Democrats in 2016. This tape only further supports the idea that the DNC was involved in what can only be described as large-scale corruption in the 2016 election cycle.

Despite the statically significant evidence that voter fraud occurred in favor of Hilary Clinton, and the Democrat operatives caught on tape admitting to it, many people will have a hard time believing that it actually occurred. Luckily there are also specific examples proving that this kind of fraud did occur in the 2016 Democrat Primary race. One such example was given on March of 2020 when an election official from Philadelphia was indicted, and later pled guilty, to having have accepted bribes in exchange for adding fake votes to certain candidates in several different democratic primary elections. The official, Domenick, also admitted to certifying the vote totals that were being reported, vote totals he had altered himself, were accurate. He was reportedly making between 300$ and 5,000$ in bribes for each election in the scheme. His voter fraud was exclusive to Democratic primary races, all of which had taken place in 2014, 2015, and 2016. These races included federal elections, as well as state and local ones.

The illegal operation was overseen by Democratic politician and ex-Congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers. Myers is no stranger to corruption, having himself been expelled from Congress in 1980 when a federal investigation caught him, on tape, accepting a $50,000$ bribe from an undercover FBI agent. On the recording Myers was heard telling the agent that "money talks in this business and bullshit walks." It seems he brought his corrupt practices back to Philadelpia when he took part in illegally influencing elections held there.  According to Fox 43 in Philadelphia, the scheme was structured like this…

“According to the indictment, Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as “consulting fees,” and then use portions of these funds to pay Demuro and others in return for tampering with election results.

Myers is charged with bribing Demuro to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual party in primary elections. Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices whom Myers favored for a variety of reasons.” (55) 

After being told what candidate to favor, Demuro would add extra ballots to the ballot box himself. In a statement released by U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain, he explained the exact process used to add the fake votes.  

“Demuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear. This is utterly reprehensible conduct. The charges announced today do not erase what he did, but they do ensure that he is held to account for those actions,”

McSwain also announced that other election officials in Philadelphia had been caught taking bribes to add fake votes to elections they were overseeing.

Although the candidates Demuro had helped bolster were not named, nor how many of them had won their elections, we know Demuro was responsible for overseeing the primary election between Sanders and Clinton. Demuro was responsible the 39th District of Philadelphia’s 36th ward. It is here that he admitted to having tampered with federal Democratic primary elections sometime over the course of 2014, 2015, and 2016. There were not many Federal primaries during this time, and only two that had more than one candidate on the ballot in his district; these were the Democratic Presidential Primary and Democratic Senatorial Primary in 2016. Results from his district show that Hilary Clinton narrowly beat Bernie Sanders by just 10 votes. Sanders had won 4 of the 5 adjacent districts. While we can’t be certain he added votes for Clinton, it certainly appears that way. Regardless it demonstrates that real voter fraud exists in Democratic Primary elections. As Attorney McSwain had made it clear, the fraudulent activity was not limited to DeMury.

        Clearly there is a lot of evidence to support the claim that the 2016 Democratic Primary was rigged in favor of Hilary Clinton. We know from their own emails and the admissions of Donna Brazille that DNC was under Clinton campaign control and actively undermining the Sanders campaign. We see evidence that the actual election process suffered from voter fraudulently from the statistical analysis of the 2016 primary results. Election officials have been charged with adding fake votes to Democrat primaries that took place during the same timeframe, in the same city the DNC chose to hold it’s 2016 National Convention. We also have two operatives caught on tape detailing widespread and officially sanctioned voter manipulation and voter fraud campaigns on behalf of the DNC. All of this was carried out by the Clinton team while they had been at the helms of the DNC, and all of it served to undermine Bernie Sanders. This could help explain why Seth was angry at the DNC prior to his, which we know he was, and also explain his motivation for leaking the DNC emails. It would certainly fit the description of the source given by Assange and repeated by Ratner.    

Rod Wheeler

        There is one more example I want to give to further support the idea that it was Seth Rich who leaked the DNC emails. So far, we have looked at two separate people who have claimed they had knowledge of Seth’s involvement. Seymour Hersh, who was told by his contact within the intelligence community, and Ellen Ratner, who was told by Julian Assange. There is a third person that we’ve mentioned, however, who was also told this. Recall the interview Rod Wheler, a private investigator working the case on behalf of the Rich family, gave to Sean Hannity. His source was from the law enforcement investigation into Seth’s death, and his testimony reinforces what we gleamed from Ellen Ratner. Firstly, this source from within the investigation also claimed that Seth was in communication with Wikileaks.

“Now, where does this information come from, in terms of knowing, or believing I should say, that Seth Rich could have been in communications with WikiLeaks? There was a federal investigator that was involved on the inside of the case, a person that’s very credible… and I will tell you this Sean; I don’t like to say things without telling you the person’s name, but I cant say the persons name because that person would be thrown under the bus.. and I can’t do that. But, this person, we checked him out, we have to check him out, very credible – he said he laid eyes on the computer and he laid eyes on the case file and he came across very credible. When you look at that with the totality of everything else that I've found on this case, it's very consistent, for a person with my experience, to begin to think, well perhaps there were some email communications between Seth and WikiLeaks. Every time I talk to the police department though Sean, every time I talk to the police department about the WikiLeaks or the emails, it is automatically shut down, that discussion is automatically shut down"

        From this statement we can expand the list to three individual sources that independently claim to have been told, by credible sources that were directly involved, that Seth Rich had been in communication with Wikileaks in an effort to get them the leaked DNC emails. This backs up what Hersh claims and also what Ratner told Ed Butowsky. Given that he claims this person was credible, in a position to know the truth, and not looking for publicity (wishing to remain anonymous), we have very little reason to question his candidness here. This source has very little potential motivation to make this up, and it fits with everything else that we have heard. Now, Rod Wheeler’s work also matches several other bits of information that have come out through our other sources; lending quite a bit of credence to what they have said.

For example, we also hear echoes of what Assange told Ratner about Seth’s motivation, namely that he was mad at Hillary Clinton and her campaign and that it was due to some actions they took while running the show at the DNC. Recall that Ratner described the source, who we now know she was told was Seth Rich, as being “an enemy” of Clinton. She elaborated that they had become an enemy because of something Hillary had done during her time in politics, likely referring to her time at the DNC. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what Wheeler says later in the interview.

Wheeler: "There were some problems that Seth was having on his job at the DNC right before he was killed. And the person that called the father after I called the police to get information, that's the person that Seth was having problems with at the DNC. So connect the dots, here; it's starting to all come together."

For context; when Wheeler mentions a DNC official who called Seth’s father, he is referring back to this statement.  

Wheeler: “I reached out the Police Department way back in March, when the family first reached hired me to get involved. I didn’t hear anything from the Police Department for 2-3 days. Guess what I learned yesterday from the family of Seth Rich? The Police Department did not call me back because someone, a high ranking official at the DNC, check this out, a high ranking official at the DNC, when I called the Police Department, they (DNC official) got that information and called the Rich family wanting to know; “why was I snooping around?’”

He later exposed the fact that this high-ranking official was Donna Brazilee, the interim DNC chair at the time of Seth’s death. He told news outlet WND the following.

“The high-ranking DNC official that called the police after I inquired about Rich's case was Donna Brazile. Why shouldn't I reveal who it was?" (5)

To clarify and summarize, through these statements we can learn…

• Rod found out that Seth was having work related problems with the head of the DNC, Donna Brazile, right before he was killed.

• Donna Brazile told the D.C. Police not to cooperate with Rod’s investigation. They appear to have listened for the most part, refusing to discuss Seth’s laptop or his communication with Wikileaks.
• Donna Brazile called Seth’s parents and was angry about Wheeler’s investigation, asking them why he was “snooping around.”

These conclusions back up Ellen Ratner’s words incredibly powerfully, and they also further illuminate what happened between Seth and the DNC/Clinton team.  We know through her statements that the source was angry at the DNC/Clinton team. We know that this is what led to the source deciding to carry out the email leak. We also know that Assange reportedly told her that the source was Seth (and his brother Aaron). We know now, from Wheeler, that Seth was angry at the DNC and had been having “problems” with the interim chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile. We know that after he was killed, Donna made efforts to block any good faith investigation into Seth’s role in the leaks and his death.  Given all of this, it would be an absolutely remarkable coincidence if this was all unrelated. In fact, it would take a completely illogical feat of mental gymnastics to deny that this is starting to paint a pretty clear picture; that Seth leaked the emails to get back at the DNC and Clinton.

Let’s take a look at what it would take to avoid reaching the aforementioned conclusion. Firstly, we would have to believe that even though Seth was having issues with Donna Brazile, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign, these issues had nothing to do with his subsequent murder or the leaked DNC emails. Even though these issues were serious enough for Donna Brazile to interfere in an ongoing murder investigation purely to keep the public from finding out about them, they had absolutely no connection to what happened to Seth or the leaked emails. On top of this, we would have to pretend that Assange was referring to some other disgruntled employee when he told Ratner it was an “enemy” of the Clinton team who leaked the emails. We would also have to assume that Ed Butowsky was, for no apparent reason, simply lying about Ellen Ratner telling him that Assange had directly named Seth and Aaron as the sources. We would have to make this assumption even though we know Assange and Ratner discussed this very topic in depth just days before. It was another enemy within the DNC, Donna was covering it up for some other reason, Butowsky was lying about Ratner for some unknown motive, using a lie that fits reality perfectly, and that Wheeler’s source was doing the same. This all needs to be accepted, and this doesn’t even address the fact that all of this information mirrors, in an incredible exact way, what Hersh’s source told him on the recorded phone that first prompted us to start digging into this. Sure, it’s possible, in the strictest and most academic meaning of the word, but it is not realistic. It is not, as I like to say, an intellectually honest position to take.

There is, however, another much simpler explanation that accounts for all of the evidence we’ve unearthed. This conclusion does not require that you repeatedly deny reality, it won’t ask you to buy into the idea that all of this is just a series of one inexplicable coincidence after the next. It doesn’t force us to accuse every person we have heard from of lying (for unknown reasons), doesn’t need  Rod Wheeler, Seymour Hersh, Ed Butowsky, Ellen Ratner, an unnamed agent who actually worked the case, a high level intelligence source, Bill Binney, and Julian Assange himself, to start independently lying about what they knew, all dreaming up and espousing the same remarkably consistent lie. No, even though many will cling to this sorry excuse for a well-reasoned explanation, those of us interested in the truth can instead reach a different conclusion; that everyone we have mentioned is telling the truth, that what they have said fits together so well because they’re describing what actually happened; Seth Rich downloaded the emails using his internal access and went on to leak what he’d obtained to Wikileaks. He was motivated by a personal desire for revenge, he wanted to expose something that the Clinton team and the DNC had done. This something, whatever it may have been, was enough to have caused open conflict between Seth and  senior Democratic Party leadership just before he was murdered.

Chapter 9 - The Liars at the Top

        At this point in my investigation it was starting to become painfully obvious that forces within our own federal government had conspired to lie about Russian involvement in these leaks. It had become clear beyond any reasonable doubt that at least some of the people who pushed the Russian hack cover story had known the true culprit was Seth Rich. In fact, I think it’s likely the vast majority of them had to have been aware of this. Given this, how were they able to successfully hide what really happened? How did they manage to convince the majority of the country’s population, the entirety of the MSM, and elements of the government opposed to their efforts and loyal to Trump, that their lies were the end all be all truth? In order to answer this question, we will start by looking at the actions of the DNC, the organization that was first aware of the truth and therefore the first to set the cover up in motion. Since it seems rather certain that Hersh’s account of event’s in the tape are accurate, let’s begin by seeing what he has to say on the subject. For clarity, I am going to outline the major players he mentions and their positions within government first.

Brennan : John Brennan, former Director of the CIA at the time.

Clapper: James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence at the time.

Rogers/”The NSA Guy”: Mike Rogers, former Director of the NSA at the time.

 “It’s a Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation operation fucking the fucking president. And at one point they even started telling the press, they were back-briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press — fucking cocksucker Rogers — was telling the press that we even know who in the Russian military intelligence service leaked it. I mean all bullshit.”

I worked for the New York Times for fucking years. The trouble with the New York Times is they have smart guys but they’re totally beholden on sources. If the president or the head of the (illegible) told them something, they actually believe it. I was hired by the Times to write about, go after the war, the Vietnam war in 72, because they were just locked in, so that’s what the Times is. These guys run the fucking Times. And Trump’s not willing to… I mean I wish he would calm down and had a better Press Secretary. Trump’s not wrong to think they all fucking lied about him.”

-----

“Brennan’s an asshole. I’ve known all these people for years. Clapper sort of a (illegible) guy but not a rocket scientist. The NSA guy (Rodgers) is a fucking moron. And the trouble with all those guys is the only way they’re going to make it to, you know, get hired by SAI (illegible) and delivered some fat cat contract is if Hillary stayed in. With Trump they’re gone. They’re done. They’re going to live on they’re pension. They’re not going to make it. And I got to tell you, guys in that job, they don’t want to live on their pension. They want to be on boards making six hundred thousand bucks.”

        From Hersh’s comments we can identify at least three leading members, all from the Director level of various departments within the Intelligence Community, who had an active role in the cover up and who helped hide the truth while at the same time promote the Russian collusion lie. These members are John Brennan (CIA), James Clapper (DNI), and Mike Rogers (NSA). He informs us that it was Brennan who was, in some capacity, in charge of this operation. It is interesting to note that was these same three agencies who created the infamous ICA that we delved into earlier, the official document that is often cited as proof that Russia interfered in the election in order to help Trump by hacking the DNC and releasing their emails. This would make any information that uses these three Directors as their source should be immediately called into question. There word is no longer good enough. In order to trust what they claim they would have to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt by means of presenting evidence, not conjecture or their interpretation. They have credibly accused of misleading the Nation on this issue by Hersh in a recording that has matched up perfectly with reality thus far, so we have to throw out anything that they purport as true without proving it. In familiar fashion, I want to examine the actions of these three men during this period to see if there’s any indication they were involved in deceiving the American people when it came to Russian Collusion.

John Brennan

        Let’s start with John Brennan. The totality of the evidence that has emerged in the three or so years since Trump took office, when examined objectively, overwhelmingly illustrates that Brennan acted dishonestly, unethically, and almost certainly illegally when it comes to his role in pushing the Russian collusion angle. It shows that he was part of an effort to knowingly push the false narrative that the Russian government acted in tandem with members of the Trump campaign in order to illegally bolster Donald Trump’s chances in the 2016 election. It’s also interesting to learn that the idea Brennan was the ringleader behind this illicit attempt to push this false narrative is not an accusation that Hersh is alone in making. Since this tape was released it has been suggested multiple times by various people, all of whom have looked into the evidence used and Brennan’s behavior, that he was the man responsible for coordinating the effort on the large scale.

I want to warn the reader here, try not to get lost in the details of the quotes provided in the next few paragraphs. I merely want to show that in the time since this tape was released, many other political analysts have independently arrived at the same conclusion’s put forth by Hersh; that Brennan led the leadership of the IC (including Clapper and Rogers) in an effort to spread their false story. For example, let’s look at an April 3rd, 2019 article from Washington Times columnist Monica Crowley. The article is titled “John Brennan, the Russian lie Ringleader?”  In this article, Monica goes over some of the same evidence that we will be examining in detail shortly and considers their implications. As a result, she arrives at the following conclusion, stating…

“These are just some of the threads suggesting Mr. Brennan may be one of the Masters of the Big Lie, requiring full investigation. If the devil is in the details, Mr. Brennan is all over the details. No wonder he — and his fellow caballers — have been so loud. They doth protest too much.” (21)

In a similar vein, the outlet RedState claimed the following in their Aug. 9th, 2019 article, “Brennan’s Role in Russia Collusion Hoax Becomes Clearer (Despite What Appear to be Multiple Perjuries”

“The bit players like Bruce Ohr and Peter Strzok seemed to understand their role in carrying out what Strzok called “the insurance policy”, but surely someone knew what all the disparate moving pieces were doing.

As mentioned, that question is unanswered. But there are candidates, one being former CIA Director John Brennan..” (94)

Directly supporting Hersh’s wider point, a Conservative Treehouse article published in October of 2019 titled “Durham looking at Brennan, a reminder of the Crown Material Conflict” discussed Brennan’s role in the formation of the 2016 ICA. Recall that this was the IC report that was used to give credence to the idea that Russia had hacked the DNC and that helped give the Russian collusion narrative the appearance of being based on legitimate intelligence. They show that it was completely politically motivated and deceptively put together. They wrote..

“CTH has previously outlined how the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity was a quickly compiled bunch of nonsense about Russian hacking.

The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.

The ICA was the brain-trust of John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey. While the majority of content was from the CIA, some of the content within the ICA was written by FBI Agent Peter Strzok who held a unique “insurance policy” interest in how the report could be utilized in 2017.  NSA Director Mike Rogers would not sign up to the “high confidence” claims, likely because he saw through the political motives of the report.” (Durham Looking At Brennan…)

        It is worth noting, however, that Mike Rogers seems to have hedged his bets by claiming a medium degree of confidence. Again, at this point all you need to take away from these excerpts is that many people have since arrived at the same idea that Hersh had put forward much earlier; that John Brennan led the cover up and the attempt to frame Russia. This strongly reinforces the validity of what Hersh was told by his source. How they arrived at these conclusions, and whether their reasoning is valid, is something I will address shortly. However, I don’t think it will be giving to much away to say that their reasoning seems to be strongly supported by the facts.

The Steele Dossier and the 2016 ICA

Now, it is important to restate that the entire false narrative of Russian collusion was predicated almost entirely on two pieces of supposed evidence, the Crowdstrike report and the Steele Dossier. If the case against Russia for hacking the DNC was presented to a jury, the first exhibit would be the Crowdstrike report. This is the first place that claimed to be able to prove Russia was behind the DNC email leaks. We have already seen the numerous issues with using this as a basis for anything and seen that it is completely unreliable. The second exhibit would be a series of allegations that were found within the Steele Dossier. Remember that the Steele Dossier was essentially collection of reports and memos that were written and put together by the ex-British spy Christopher Steele. The Steele Dossier has since been completely and utterly discredited. Its information is so clearly false that it is shocking it was not simply laughed at and tossed into the trash by the agencies of our intel community that reviewed it. It surely would have been if they were engaged in a good faith analysis of the facts. Even in the early stages of its emergence it was described to Trump as “unverified and salacious” by FBI Director James Comey, and that Steele’s primary sub source told the FBI the information was not reliable or verified. We now know that this was because the information within the Steele Dossier unverifiable. The allegations contained within where demonstrably false, and as the source Steele used for this information, a source that did not even stand behind it, had told the FBI; the allegations were nothing but “bar talk.”

However, it appears that political expediency was more important than truth or integrity, as we know that this Dossier was used, at the directive of John Brennan, as a basis for the conclusions put forth in the ICA. This fact is one that Brennan is demonstrably working to conceal. He went so far as to lie to Congress about its inclusion in the ICA and also about his role in making sure it was included. To prove that this is true we need to first look at an excerpt from James Comey congressional testimony to the House Oversight Committee in December of 2018. He was being questioned, under oath, by then Chairmen Trey Gowdy when the following exchange occurred.

Gowdy: Mr Comey, do you recall – when I use the phrase “crown materials”, what does that refer to?

Comey: I think it refers to material that – now called the Steele Dossier. I mean, I could be wrong about that, but I think it’s the name that analysts used for that material.” (23)

From this we can gather that the operational name used to refer to the Steele Dossier internally was “the crown material.” This matters because the same Trey Gowdy later stated, in May of 2019, that there were emails sent by James Comey where Comey describes that Brennan was the driving force behind including the Steele Dossier’s information in the ICA. Gowdy claimed that the email contained the sentence, “Brennan is insisting the Crown Material be included in our intel assessment.” From Comey’s own testimony we know that this is a direct reference to the Steele Dossier. Now, Brennan has denied that he did such a thing.  In his May 23rd 2017 testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (widely known as the HPSCI), he had the following exchange with Trey Gowdy. (25)

GOWDY: Director Brennan, do you know who commissioned the Steele dossier?

BRENNAN: I don’t.

GOWDY: Do you know if the bureau [FBI] ever relied on the Steele dossier as part of any court filing, applications?

BRENNAN: I have no awareness.

GOWDY: Did the CIA rely on it?

BRENNAN: No.

GOWDY: Why not?

BRENNAN: Because we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done. Uh … it was not. (24)

This testimony was given under oath and directly contradicts the testimony given by Comey and Comey’s email that Gowdy reportedly saw. It is clear who has more of a reason to lie here and, given the facts, it seems likely that Brennan committed perjury in order to hide the fact that he personally ensured this dossier information was included. What possible reason would he have to hide this information, risking perjury to do so, unless he knew that it was false and was trying to cover his tracks? There is more evidence that John Brennan was lying when he denied that the CIA relied on the Dossier’s information. In a text message sent by the lead investigator of the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign, Peter Stzrok, to his lover and co-investigator Lisa Page, he describes that under John Brennan’s leadership the CIA had likely obtained the Steele Dossier information before even they had. He wrote..  

“I’m beginning to think the agency (the CIA) got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn’t shared it completely with us. Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some of the leaks.”

So according to Strzok, he believed that the CIA was pushing the Steele Dossier to the media and had lied to even the FBI about it. If this is true Brennan also lied to Congress, as it directly contradicred his testimony. All of this evidence just goes to shows that Brennan was indeed one of the main players responsible for building the false Russian collusion narrative.

        In fact, it appears that the ICA’s primary purpose was to legitimize the shaky information that had came from dubious sources, both directly paid for by the DNC through Perkins Coie, the Steele Dossier and the Crowsdtrike report’s findings. These sources both turned out to be completely false and utterly unreliable when closely scrutinized, so it appears they simply laundered the information by presenting as if they were the independent and official conclusions of the intelligence community. Doing this allowed the information to come off as much more credible merely by appealing to the authority that these institutions have. When we see that Brenna did everything that he could to hide the fact that the IC agencies were merely parroting the claims of politically motivated lies, it becomes clear that he did not believe the details to be true either. If he did, what is the reason for hiding the information’s true origins? Conservative Treehouse lays it out quite plainly when they stated the following…

“Was the ICA document a politically engineered report stemming from within a corrupt intelligence network?

The importance of that question is rather large. All of the downstream claims about Russian activity, including the Russian indictments promoted by Rosenstein and the Mueller team, are centered around origination claims of illicit Russian activity outlined in the ICA.

If the ICA is a false political document…. then guess what?

Yep, the entire narrative from the JAR and ICA is part of a big fraud. [Which it is]” (Durham Looking At Brennan)

I would add that this was not just a fraud, but that it was a fraud signed off on and perpetrated by the same exact people that Hersh claims where behind in this tape, namely, Brennan, Rogers, and Clapper. These people were the heads of the CIA, NSA, and the DNI respectively.

The Rest of the IC Leadership’s Roles- Clapper, Rogers, and Comey

Much information has come to light that backs up Hersh’s proposition that the DNI James Clapper played a role in misleading the media. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigated and issued a final report on Russian interreference that proved Clapper had been in contact with the Press in an effort to spread the false information found within the Steele Dossier. From the report..

Finding #44: Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, now a CNN national security analyst, provided inconsistent testimony to the Committee about his contacts with the media, including CNN.”

As the federalist reported on March 16th, 2019..

“Clapper flatly denied ‘discussing[ing] the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists,” the committee wrote. Clapper then backtracked when asked specifically about his discussions with Tapper. “Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic.”

To recap: Clapper leaked information about the dossier briefing to Tapper (of CNN), lied to Congress about leaking, and was then given a contributor contract with CNN a few months later. As Mollie Hemingway reported, these lies would all eventually prove to be a set-up scheme by Clapper and then-FBI director James Comey to give legitimacy to the fabricated dossier (Osburn)

Clapper was also one of the people who laundered the discredited information into an official government report through the creation of the 2016 ICA. As Senator Rand Paul explained on Fox and Friends on March 28th, 2019…

“My source tells me that the intelligence community, Obama's intelligence community Brennan, Clapper, Comey, they were frustrated because they had this Russian dossier but nobody believed it was real... they couldn't get anything out of it,”

“Finally, they decided well what we have to do is attach this dossier, this fake dossier, to an intelligence report. So now Obama is officially seeing it and then also it's given to Trump at this point….”                                                                                                                                         “But extraordinary power of these people and extraordinary corruption… they tried to bring down a sitting president.” (Garcia)

This all matches up exactly with what Hersh had described over a year prior to this information making it to the public. These articles were both published in March of 2019, and they were shocking for a lot of Americans. Yet somehow on Aug 1st, 2017 Seymor Hersh was caught on tape making these same exact accusations, well before even congressman and respected journalists caught on to the role’s Clapper, Rogers, Comey, and Brennan had played.

The DNC and Donna Brazile’s Role in the Cover Up

        Although Hersh doesn’t directly implicate the DNC in the cover up, I believe it can be shown quite conclusively that they were involved directly. After all, if the heads of the IC were helping cover up the truth it’s likely that they knew, or at least had an idea of, what that truth was. It would make sense if somehow the DNC clued them in and asked for assistance. Perhaps the forces within the government who ran with this lie anyway saw it as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, they could help Clinton by covering up an incident that would surely ruin her chances, and they could use it in turn to further their ongoing efforts to tie Trump to the Russian interference. We know the DNC gave them the Crowdstrike report (albeit only a redacted version of the report) and that the IC took it despite overwhelming evidence that it wasn’t reliable. We also that Donna Brazile interfered in Rod Wheeler’s investigation by telling the DC Police not to cooperate with him and by hassling the family about his involvement.

        Hersh does, however, drop some information that is incredibly significant but could almost be glossed over. He does not spend much time on the claim and doesn’t appear completely comfortable with it’s obvious implications. He says that Seth had sent an email to an unknown source, and that this email indicated that Seth felt his life was being threatened. This email was sent before the emails were made public…

“The word was passed according to the NSA report, “I also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems.” Okay. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know whether he…”

Hersh abruptly moves on. If Seth was sending someone an email like this, he clearly had a reason to believe the recipient of it was a threat to him. This indicates that he was responding to someone who was threatening him or in some way trying to scare him enough to discourage him from going public. Now, remember that at this point in time, according to Rod Wheeler, Seth was “having some problems at work” with Donna Brazile. The DNC would have had a good reason to suspect that Seth was involved if they had learned off the breach before the emails were released to the public. Who else would have known that Seth might have even had possession of the emails, and who would have also had an incentive to prevent him from going public? The only organization that fits this bill is the DNC, particularly, it would have only been member of the DNC leadership.

        We know that Donna interfered in the investigation from Rod Wheeler’s statements. She was not only calling the family and asking them why Rod was snooping around, but she was in contact with DC Police in order to instruct them not to cooperate with Wheeler. I also found a much more specific, and much more troubling, accusation through a familiar source, Ed Butowsky’s lawsuit. Recall that Butowsky is the Dallas financial advisor who Ellen Ratner asked to relay a message from Assange to the Rich family that and Aaron were the sources. He was also the party who funded Rod Wheeler on Seth’s parents’ behalf. In his lawsuit him and his legal team make a stunning claim...

“Shortly after the murder, the interim DNC chair at the time, Donna Brazile, reached out to Mr. McCabe and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for help in dealing with the political consequences of the murder. Ms. Brazile knew suspicions would soon arise, fairly or unfairly, that the murder was connected to the email leaks. D.C. police allowed the FBI to unlock Seth Rich's electronic devices, and the FBI obtained data showing that Mr. Rich had indeed provided the DNC emails to Wikileaks. At Mr. McCabe's direction, however, that information was kept secret with orders that it not be produced in response to any Freedom of Information Act request. For her part, Ms. Bowser directed D.C. police not to pursue any investigative avenues that might connect the murder to the email leaks. At her direction, local police blamed the murder on a “botched robbery” even though Mr. Rich's watch, wallet, and other belongings were not removed from his body.”

This is a shocking claim, but one must admit that it does match reality incredibly well. This would account for why their seemed to be absolutely no curiosity about Seth’s death either federally or locally, and it explains why the IC was so desperate to blame this “hack” on Russia. It would account for why the DC Police followed Brazile’s instructions when she told them not to work with Wheeler, and it would account for her ongoing role of obstructing any good faith attempts at getting to the truth. No matter how you slice it, Donna Brazile’s fingerprints are all over this thing. She was having arguments with Seth prior to his death, she was involved in covering it up, she was involved in soliciting help from the federal government and from the FBI.

Everything we see in the public domain points to Hersh being spot on yet again. Somehow Hersh had known about the lies that these leaders of the IC had told the world years before it became mainstream news through congressional investigations. Today, there is mountains of evidence that the leader’s who were behind pushing the lie of Russian collusion were indeed Brennan, Clapper, Rogers, particularly through the creation of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment. There is evidence that Donna Brazile and the DNC suspected Seth and were having issues with him, making them suspect number one for he was worried about and thought might try to harm him. The line that Seth typed about “having shared the contents with several of my friends” also indicates that he had help, matching the idea that others were involved. This lends credibility to the claim that Ratner made that Aaron was involved as well. Stepping back to consider things briefly one cannot help but feel that it all seems too perfect not to be the truth, it simply all fits. No giant leaps of faith need to be taken, completely unconnected sources are telling the same exact story, and every bit of evidence, most of which came up much later, only serves to confirm Hersh’s account further.  

Chapter 10 – Putting it All Together

        It was at this point in my investigation that any doubt I had left about Seth Rich being the source truly left me. I looked at the totality of the evidence of concluded that there was simply no scenario in which all of these individual pieces of evidence could all remain true except for one scenario, and that was the scenario that had been laid out by Hersh. It was at this point, when I had completely convinced myself, that I decided to reach out to someone who had experienced this story firsthand. I reached out to the one source who I felt would know the full story, and whose name kept popping up time and time again in my research. This source would not only confirm everything I had deduced on my own, but he would absolutely blow my mind by filling in the missing details and proving Seth’s involvement beyond a reasonable double, with real evidence. Before getting to what my source divulged to me, let’s take one last look at what we’ve learned so far.

        The conventional wisdom that most people believe has very little evidence to back it up. The story that it was the Russian who had hacked the DNC and subsequently sent them to Wikileaks turned out to be a cover story cooked up by the DNC. They managed to this by hiring the law firm Perkins Coie to hire Crowdstrike, who performed the analysis of the servers and crafted the explanation that blamed a Russian hack. On top of this Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS to create a dossier that alleged the Trump team had coordinated with Russia in their influence operation. This resulted in the Steele Dossier, which was then pushed into every significant intelligence agency in the Obama Administration. These intelligence organizations used the Steele Dossier, without verifying the information contained within, to carry out surveillance on the Trump and as an excuse to send informants, who often posed as Russia agents, into the Trump Campaign. After all of these efforts proved futile instead of shutting down the investigations, they used these meetings between Trump campaign staff and the fake Russians who were actually confidential informants, as examples of collusion to further push their Russian Collusion narrative. These efforts ultimately led to the formation of the Special Counsel, which harassed, entrapped, and coerced members of the Trump team. They used methods like charging them with lying without evidence that they had lied, pushing Trump campaign members to plead guilty to these bogus charges with threats (in some cases threatening members of their families with prosecution), and charging staff with crimes that were totally unrelated to Russian collusion. Despite all of these shady and unethical techniques, upon its completion the Special Counsel was forced to admit that there was no evidence that any American had helped Russia with its election interference activities. Those activities mainly focused on one allegation, that the Russian government had carried out the hack of the DNC and subsequent email leak.

        Seeing how dishonest the process had been that had been used to arrive at this conclusion, there was a very good reason to be incredibly skeptical of it. It was clear that the DNC sought to blame Russia and Trump from the very beginning of the situation, and that the government had gone along with this keeping this story alive later on down the road. Despite the DNC’s best efforts to squash speculation that the mysterious murder of Seth Rich might somehow have been connected to the leaks, several sources began releasing information that indicated Seth Rich might have been involved. Assange publicly denied that it had been Russia who gave the emails and hinted that it had actually been Seth Rich who was his source. Rod Wheeler was hired as a private investigator, and he was told by several sources that Seth had been in contact with Wikileaks and that he had been having issues at work with DNC leadership. Bill Binney and other retired intelligence analysts concluded that the DNC emails had not been obtained through a hack, instead claiming they’d come from an on-site leak. These efforts culminated in a Fox News article that, for the first in a major publication, claimed that Seth Rich had been the source of the leak. This article was taken down under immense pressure from the DNC and from the Rich family itself.

        All this information prevented the speculation about Seth Rich from going away completely, and many people still felt that he had probably been involved. In August of 2017 this speculation was seemingly confirmed when Wikileaks released a tape of someone, supposedly decorated reporter Seymour Hersh, who was recorded (without his knowledge) relaying the story that a high-level source from within the IC community had told to him about Seth Rich and his involvement in the WikiLeaks leak. In this tape Hersh, or someone prorupting to be Hersh, makes several verifiable claims. This is to say, they were claims that could be confirmed or proven false, they were not so ambiguous or abstract that they couldn’t realistically be vetted. It was the prevalence of these facts, combined with Hersh’s reputation, as well as the seeming plausibility of the story, that made me decide to seriously look into them. I set forth to see if I could corroborate or debunk what was put forth on the tape.

        I started with the most important question of all; was there any way to determine if this was truly Hersh speaking on the tape? If this could be proven, then could we find evidence that Hersh really had access to such an unlikely source? I realized that by answering the question of whether or not Hersh had a source like this, I could also answer the question of whether it was Hersh or not on the tape. If he really had this source, it would be awfully unlikely that hoaxer would know about it. Afterall, the person he describes would need to extremely high level in the intelligence community, been willing to talk to Hersh about highly sensitive and classified information, and also proven himself to have been reliable before. These make up an extremely unlikely set of traits, and therefore it was rather unlikely that this person both existed and was willing to share his knowledge with Hersh. To my surprise, I quickly found proof that Hersh does indeed have such a source. This proof came from the Netflix special Wormwood.  In this series Hersh describes his source in great detail. The person he describes matches exactly what is said about him on the tape. He describes him as an extremely high-level member of the intelligence community who Hersh has known for a long time. He describes that this source had went and looked up a file for him on a different case, and that is was a file that very few people in the country would have access to. The source then relayed what he had learned from the file to Hersh. The information turned out to be completely consistent with everything else known about the case, and it also gave key details that had been unheard of beforehand, thus proving that it was the real account of what had happened. To top it all off, this special was released after the tape describing Seth Rich’s role in the DNC leaks, so if it had been the result of a hoaxer, they would have no way to have known about it. This to me proved that it was Hersh on the tape, and also that what he had laid out truly came from a high-level source within the federal intelligence community.

        With this knowledge I went on to the next bit of information that is presented on the tape, the chain of custody described for the examination of Seth’s laptop. Hersh claimed that the DC Police first tried to get into the laptop but were not able to, and that eventually it was given to a “hot shot” FBI Field Office in DC. He states that this group within the FBI was able to gain access. PI Rod Wheeler had been told by a member of the investigation that they had examined Seth’s laptop. He reached out for comment and was given a statement from the DC Police pointing all future inquiries to the FBI. He followed this advice and reached out to the FBI, who then sent him to back to the DC Police. The official responses from both organizations show that they both had possession of the laptop at some point in time. There is no other way the DC Police would randomly send to the FBI, the FBI would be furious if there was no real basis for this recommendation. The same can be said of the FBI sending Wheeler to the DC Police. The only rational explanation is that they both handled the laptop, or that it was in some sort of joint possession. Looking into FBI field offices in DC one finds that the FBI CART Office in DC is the prime candidate. They describe themselves as being the “go-to force for providing digital forensic services not only to our own investigators but also in some instances to our local, state, and federal partners.”  Despite the fact the FBI repeatedly denied ever possessing Seth’s laptop, Deborah Sines, ex DOJ lawyer and lead in prosecutor in the Seth Rich murder case, admitted under oath that the FBI did in fact examine Seth’s laptop.

        Having proven that Hersh did have the source described and that it was almost certainly his voice on the tape, and verifying that the chain custody he describes matches the other evidence that has since become publicly available, we have reason to take his most pivotal claim seriously; that the laptop showed Seth Rich had been in communication with Wikileaks in an effort to publish the leaked DNC emails. First, I showed that the official story told by the DOJ, that it was a Russian hack that had been the source of the emails, could not be true. This conclusion was reached by examining how this conclusion had been reached. It came from a report created by a third party, private company that the DNC hired themselves named Crowdstrike. This company had political motivations to lie and to blame Russia, had a massive conflict of interest because they were paid by the DNC, and handed over only a redacted version of their report to the IC. No IC agency was allowed to independently verify the conclusions because none of them were ever allowed access to the DNC servers. This in itself was suspect, but when the VIPS report, a report written by credible and expert ex intelligence analysts with sterling reputations and centuries of experience between them, came out against Crowdstrike’s declarations. They showed forensically that a remote hack was impossible and that it was instead a local leak.  This was further reinforced by the CEO of Crowdstrike’s testimony to congress, where he admitted there was no proof that Russia had ever exfiltrated the emails. Julian Assange also emphatically denied the idea that Russia was his source, and he has heavily hinted that it was Seth Rich instead.

        With the knowledge that it was not Russia I began to look for indications that pointed to Seth Rich being the culprit instead. There were multiple independent sources that confirmed this. Rod Wheeler was told this by an investigator assigned to the case. Ellen Ratner was supposedly told by Julian Assange himself that Seth and Aaron Rich were responsible for the leaks. This is backed up by public statements she made around the time saying that she had met with Assange and that he told the source was an enemy of Clinton associated with the campaign, and that it was not Russian government. She told this to Ed Butowsky, Dallas businessman and media personality. This all matched up perfectly with the forensic data analysis that Bill Binney and other members of VIPS had done and released publicly, and it matched perfectly what Hersh said on the secretly recorded tape. Ratner claimed publicly that she had met with Assange right before the Election, and that at this meeting Assange had described his source. He claimed that the source had not been Russia but had instead been someone close to the Clinton Campaign that considered Hilary Clinton an enemy. Given that she had told Butowsky this description applied to Seth Rich, I searched for a motive that would have driven Seth to act against the Clinton Campaign. I found that Seth had used several accounts to post on social media, and that one of them proved he was a devout Bernie Sanders supporter. This knowledee, combined with the fact that the emails leaks showed that the DNC and the Clinton team had rigged the primaries against Bernie, provided the explanation; Seth had likely learned about the effort to undermine the Sanders campaign, and had carried out the leaks to expose this malfeasance.  

        The last thing that we learned from the tape that I looked into was the assertation that certain governmental figures were involved in a cover up. He described the ringleader as John Brennan, something that has become clear through subsequent revelations and congressional testimony. He described Clapper and Rogers as having a hand in the cover up, both of whom were involved in the creation of the ICA that attempted to pass off the information from Crowdstrike’s faulty report and the disproven Steele Dossier as intelligence obtained through reputable and trusted intelligence channels. In reality, they had only seen a redacted politically motivated PR piece to conclude Russia had hacked the DNC, and the rest came from a dossier that had been compiled by someone who had been paid by Clinton team and was full of patently false information. This was information that came from a source who did not stand by any of the allegations attributed to him. In fact, this source had told the FBI not to rely on any of it and that it was only bar talk. Donna Brazile, who Rod Wheeler claimed had argued with Seth before his death, had obstructed Wheeler’s investigation by telling the DC Police not to cooperate with him. According to Butwosky’s lawsuit she had initiated the cover up by going to the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, as well as the FBI director Andrew McCabe. Brazile solicited the help of these two officials to cover up Seth’s tole in the leaks. She claimed she needed this to happen in order to avoid the political ramifications that would arrive if the public learned the truth, that Seth Rich had been responsible for leaking the DNC emails to Wikileaks just before his violent death.  

        Now we had a plethora of verified and corroborated facts, some of which are significant on their own accord, and some seem seen somewhat unremarkable in isolation. However, when we took all of these sporadic and individual pieces of evidence and pieced them together it allowed us to draw some very clear conclusions, conclusions that we would have otherwise never been able to confidently arrive at. Since we took the time to verify each component, any potential account of the truth that we might have considered needed to allow all of the individual facts to remain true. The explanation couldn’t conflict or contradict anything that we had already proven to be true. This examination and consideration of the evidence painted a very clear and undeniable picture of reality;

It indicates that Seth Rich, not Russia, was undeniably the true source of the DNC email leaks, and he was helped by his brother Aaron. In order to not have reached this conclusion, we would have needed to assume that Butowsky had been lying about Ratner’s statements. We would need to conclude this despite the fact that her public comments indicated that she did truly speak with Assange and that he told her precise details about his source. We would have to ignore that these details, details that Assange had given her himself, just so happened to match what Rod Wheeler later found out from a source within the federal investigation; Seth Rich had been the source for Wikileaks. We would also have to assume Assange was blatantly lying when he told multiple outlets that his source was not Russia and that it came to him through an internal leak, not a hack. We would need to overlook the forensic evidence that proves the data could not have been taken from the DNC by remote hack and that high-ranking ex intelligence analysts believe this to be true beyond any doubt. Above all, we would have to pretend that Hersh’s once in a lifetime and otherwise impeccable source got the central tenant of the story wrong.  We would also need to come up with another explanation for why Perkins Coie had hired Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, and the entire illicit effort to push the narrative the Russia had been behind the leaks.

We ascertained that Seth had been motivated by anger over actions Clinton took while running the DNC. This was almost certainly over the DNC’s efforts to sabotage and undermine the campaign of his favored candidate, Bernie Sanders, in effort to secure the nomination for Clinton. It became clear that Seth had resolved to leak emails from the DNC/Clinton team in order to expose this malfeasance by showing it to the world. We know this because we’ve been told Seth’s motivations described by Ratner, who is repeating words she heard from Assange. This matches the internet activity that Seth had participated in that showed he was a supporter of the Sanders Campaign. We also know that Seth was feuding with Donna Brazile at the time of his death, so he was clearly angry about something he had learned about the DNC’s actions, and we also know that they had been rigging the primary race at the same time.  It also makes basic logical sense that this was the motivation behind the leaks, the main misconduct that the emails exposed was the DNC’s deliberate railroading of the Sander’s Campaign. It doesn’t take a huge leap of logic to assume this was what he wanted to expose. We know he was mad about something, and this explanation fits everything other piece of evidence that is available.

In an act of retaliation, he used his employee access to locally copy the files and then reached out to Wikileaks. The overwhelming evidence that we have covered proving there is no proof of Russian hacking, and in fact this premise is disproven by the evidence. The signs point to it coming from a local source, likely transferred to a flash drive. The forensic data, the eyewitness testimony, and the DNC’s actions upon learning Assange had obtained emails from the DNC that he was preparing to leak all point to an inside job and not a foreign hacking operation. The evidence that has been put forth to supposedly prove that it had been a remote hack doesn’t hold to scrutiny, and in fact rules out the very premise; the transfer speeds were too high to have been an over the internet transfer, and matched the exact speed that is seen in a local file transfer.

We learned that both the DC Police and the FBI reviewed Seth Rich’s laptop, and FBI Field Office (likely DC CART) was able to gain access. Deborah Sines deposition confirmed beyond any doubt that the FBI had examined Seth’s laptop, despite their repeated denials. We also know that since this investigation was under the jurisdiction of the DC Police, the only way this could have happened was if the DC Police asked for FBI help, or if there had been an issue of national security involved. It’s likely that both of these had been factors leading the FBI reviewing Seth’s laptop. The statements given to investigator Rod Wheeler prove that both the DC Police and the FBI had been in contact with the laptop, and the most likely location for it to have been performed was the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team (CART) Field Office in D.C. The CART field office’s stated purpose was to assist both Federal and local investigations involving the forensic analysis of computers and digital data. Judging from the reaction of Deborah Sines when she was asked if CART had possession of Seth’s laptop, she declined to answer but didn’t do much to deny the suggestion, it seems like this was indeed where the laptop was analyzed.  

We learned Donna Brazile, Brennan, James Clapper, Mike Rogers, DC Mayor Bowser, and the DC Police were involved in the cover up of a murder. They did so out of fear for the potential political ramifications that would result if the public learned the truth. This information came from Hersh’s statement on the recording as well as from information that was contained in a legal filling for a lawsuit brought forth by Ed Butowsky. It explains why the DC Police pushed the idea that Seth had been the victim of a botched robber despite the fact that nothing had been taken from his person. It explained why FOIA requests have repeatedly withheld documents relating to Seth Rich that we know must exist. It is also supported by the unethical steps taken to push the Russian collusion narrative by the NSA, FBI, and the CIA. Donna Brazile’s role accounts for why she called the DC Police and instructed them not to cooperate with Rod Wheeler, and backs up lead DC homicide detective Joseph Dellacarma’s statement’s to Rod Wheeler claiming he had been instructed not to publicly link Seth Rich with Wikileaks in any way.

        These are the main facts that we can say, with near certainty, we’ve proven to be true through the results of our investigation. There is certainly much more that could be reasonably assumed or surmised, but these are the conclusions that I have total confidence in. I would be willing to bet my life savings on any one of them. The evidence has become clear and unambiguous through our efforts. Despite the face the pieces of the puzzle were initially disjointed, separated, and of disputed validity, and despite the fact that they had come from a variety of totally separate players, careful examination and relentless verification led to them all fitting together, of their own accord, nearly perfectly. When each piece is verified, and they are all taken together the picture they help paint is unambiguous and leaves us with only one possible explanation; Seth Rich was the source of the DNC email leaks. There are no mental gymnastics needed to make the evidence support this, it does so on its own merit. No clearly true information needs to be ignored, no denial of reality is necessary. This is all possible because, unlike the DNC and the intelligence community, we have allowed the evidence to describe the truth. We don’t need to manipulate, contort, cover up, and silence witnesses, these steps were only necessary because they needed to push a politically motivated lie.

Armed with the knowledge of what had really happened, and bolstered by the confidence that I had in my conclusions, II decided to reach out to someone who I thought might be able to fill in any remaining blanks or let me know if I’d missed anything. This person was someone who had been at the center of the investigation into Seth’s death and also been swept up in the controversy that had resulted from trying to get the truth out there. I knew this was someone who likely knew, more or less, the entire story, and I hoped that he would be willing to share his knowledge once he saw the conclusions, I’d been able to reach. I had no way of knowing just how open this person would end up being, or how much more I would learn about the case itself, as well as the DNC’s efforts to make sure the truth remained buried.  

Chapter 11 – Ed Butowsky

        The person I reached out to was Ed Butowsky, the Dallas businessman whose lawsuits have been key in our efforts to verify the account of the story put forth by Hersh. I noticed that throughout my investigation there was one source that continually offered details and corroboration that not only matched up with everything else I was learning, but that they often perfectly explained several of the more out of place and seemingly inexplicable aspects of the case. Everything he put forth fit the known facts right away, his claims always perfectly fit in and matched up with the broader picture that was starting to emerge. I knew that this would not have been possible unless he somehow had managed to put together an accurate and detailed account of the truth. Not only was he willing to make these statements, but (perhaps just as importantly) he was also prepared to make them in a legal setting where he might have to back them up. This told me that he might actually have real evidence to support the stunning claims put forth in his legal filings. It seemed likely to me that he knew the pretty much the whole story, more or less, and that he was also fed up with being called a liar. Since the only people who probably knew more about the case where not likely to respond to any attempts at contact by me, i.e. Aaron Rich and Julian Assange, I thought he would be my best bet.

Like me, Ed was clearly fed up with the deception that was being continually perpetrated upon the United States citizenry regarding this case. If I wanted to learn the truth behind this entire case in as much detail and with as much confidence as I possibly could, Ed Butowsky would be the guy to talk to. If I really wanted to understand what role Seth Rich played in the DNC email leaks and the details behind how all the pieces fell into place, Ed Butowsky would be the person to talk to. If I wanted to ascertain as much as possible about his subsequent murder, determine who might have had the means and motive to kill Seth, and learn about the key circumstances surrounding his murder and it’s cover up,  Ed Butowsky would be the person to talk to. I also hoped that he could help provide a better understanding of how the case was influenced by the political climate of the time, as well as the various ways that it has in turn influenced the direction of US Politics itself. I reached out to Ed Butowsky and explained that I had been looking to Seth’s death and involvement with DNC emails and explained that I would love a chance to hear his story. Within 24 hours Ed had gotten back to me, and we set up a time to sit down and meet.  

My first meeting with Ed was an enlightening and enjoyable experience. It was not only clear that he knew the details of this case inside and out, but also that he was a good-natured and amicable person. In person Ed is a far cry from the shadowy, scheming, dishonest political operator the media has portrayed him as. Most of our conversation was serious and centered on the topic, after all we were talking about a murder that was covered up by the government for political purposes, but there were plenty of times were his sense of humor shone through and the tone became much more light hearted. I couldn’t help but laugh when he described the unexpected set of circumstances that led to the creation of the infamous Sy Hersh’s recording. It turns out this recording, the same one that had been the backbone of my investigation, exists primarily thanks to two things; Sy Hersh’s extremely fast speaking pace and Ed Butowsky’s poor handwriting. I will tell this particular tale in more detail later in the chapter, when we get to this part of Ed’s story. However, it helps demonstrate an overall point that I want to make before diving into the full story.

. That point is this; It was abundantly clear to me then, just as it is abundantly clear to me know, that Ed was not being driven by any kind of maliciousness, self-serving intentions, or to push a political agenda. He seemed driven by a desire to clear his name by helping get the truth into the hands of the American people, and a desire to help me understand what happened simply because I had asked him too. It only took an hour or two of speaking with him for me to see this clearly. He came across someone who genuinely felt sorry for everything the Rich family has had to go through. He empathized even with those who have attacked him and tried to understand what their motivations might have been. He never once wished ill will towards any person, not even to those who I think would have deserved it, those who tried to ruin him and his reputation. Overall, I want to get across one thing; I could tell immediately that Ed was not the man the left-wing media had portrayed him to be. Keep that in mind as we go over his unbelievable story.

Ed’s Story

How Ellen Ratner first involved Ed in the Seth Rich case.

When I spoke to Ed Butowsky I knew that he had been a key figure in the forefront of this case. From my research it was clear that he was directly involved in the effort to uncover the truth. Afterall, he was connected to most of the people who have provided us with the first or secondhand information that became critical in piecing together what had happened. I wanted to know how he found himself in this position, what circumstances had led to him playing such a key role in the case? Dealing with secretive inside sources and high-profile private investigators couldn’t exactly be described as familiar territory for Ed; he had spent his life prior to this becoming a very successful businessmen and financial advisor. He had built a sterling reputation as a keen business mind, helping the rich and powerful manage billions of dollars worth of capital. He has literally written a book on investment strategy. Yet someone he found himself described by NPR as “The Man Behind the Scene’s in Fox News’ Discredited Seth Rich Story.”  Through my conversations with Ed I was able to find out exactly how he found himself in this position.  Using the events outlined in a legal complaint that he filed in his suit against NPR and various media outlets (26) as a backbone, I will outline the story Ed told me of how he ended up getting swept up in the quest for truth in Seth’s death.  

As he described to me and in his court case, the very first event that led his involvement was a phone call from his friend Ellen Ratner. Ed has known Ellen for years, having me her years prior in the green room at Fox News. Ed Butowsky and Ellen Ratner had both worked in the media for years, Ratner had been a Fox New’s analyst and appeared on shows The Strategy Rom as well as The Long and Short of It, and Butowsky had written articles for Sports Illustrated, Brietbart, and been a Fox News correspondent. Over the years Butowsky and Ratner had become friends and Ed had even helped her take a business venture that had been bleeding money and bring it back into the green. It was through this friendship and longtime correspondence that led to Ratner making a surprise request of Butowsky shortly of the 2016 Presidential Election Day.

She had reached out to him with a surprising and unexpected request from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. She told Ed she had met with Julian just days before the 2016 election. Ellen’s brother Michael Ratner had been representing Assange as a human right’s attorney when he tragically passed away in May of 2016. (31) After his death several meetings were set up between Assange and relatives of the Ratner family. In November of 2016 Ellen Ratner attended one such meeting. During this meeting the discussion turned to the topic of the DNC emails leaks, and they discussed how Assange had managed to obtain them. Assange reportedly told her the shocking truth; that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich, with help from his brother Aaron, had been WikiLeaks source for the recently published DNC emails. According to what Ed told me, Assange told Ratner three specific pieces of information; Aaron and Seth had been his source, that the password to the DNC server had been “Change,” and that the password to Podesta’s email account had been “password.” She explained to Ed that Assange had gone further than this, asking for Ellen’s help relaying this information to Seth’s parents, Joel and Mary Rich. Assange felt that this knowledge might help the Rich family discover the identity of their son’s murderers, knowing that Seth’s involvement might have led to his killing. It provided a pretty obvious potential motive; there would have been no shortage of very powerful people in DC who would have wanted to prevent the release of the emails. As hard as it was to consider, perhaps someone had hoped Seth’s death would lead to the stolen emails would being buried alongside with him.

When I spoke with Ed, I asked him what Seth’s motivation had been for carrying out the leaks. He confirmed the theory that I had come up with by examining Ratner’s public statements; Seth leaked emails because he had learned about the DNC’s primary rigging efforts against Bernie Sanders. Ed explained to me that Seth Rich, along with the rest of his entire family, had been die hard Bernie Sanders supporters. Seth’s unearthed social media presence had already made this abundantly clear, and the fact that someone had tried to hide it had made it all the more obvious that it was an important connection. What had specifically set Seth off? Remember that one of Seth’s responsibilities at the DNC was to protect against voter suppression, as is seen here in a Rolling Stones article published on Aug. 16th, 2020.

“A glorified internship at a polling firm led to a job at the Democratic National Committee registering new voters and protecting against voter suppression.” (Kroll)

Through this role at the DNC, Ed explained to me, Seth had learned about a specific example of voter suppression against Sanders voters, suppression that had been intentionally carried out by the DNC itself. He learned that members of the DNC had gone to areas where polling showed the residents had heavily favored Bernie Sander over Clinton as the Democratic nominee for 2016 presidential race. These DNC employees had gone to these area’s voting locations on their specific election days and had told large groups of voters, the majority of whom where Sanders supporters, that their voting region had changed and that they would need to fill out special absentee ballots instead of following the traditional voting process. This had been a deliberate lie designed to suppress their votes. They had then collected these “special” absentee ballots and tossed them, resulting in a large number of votes that should have gone to Sanders not being counted at all. Seth was furious upon hearing the details of this illicit operation, not only was it the exact activity he had been tasked with preventing, it was targeting his preferred candidate. He knew the password to the server, which according to Assange had been “change,” and knew the emails contained proof that the DNC was conspiring against Bernie. This had been his reason; this is why he leaked the DNC’s emails to Wikileaks.

This kind of voter manipulation and fraud, along with vote stuffing efforts we’ve already looked at, helped account for the discrepancies that exist in the voter data showing that there had been fraud in favor of Hillary Clinton. This explanation fit everything I had learned up until this point perfectly. It backed up the data showing there had been fraud. It backed up the public statements Ratner had made about the source being angry at Clinton for actions she had taken during her career in public service. It matched what the content of the emails exposed, a coordinated effort on the part of the DNC against Bernie Sanders. It explained why someone would want to cover up the traces of online activity that showed Seth had been a fervent Sander’s supporter, and it explained why he had argued with Donna Brazile shortly before his death. The explanation fit so well that the only aspect of it that surprised me was the brazenness of the DNC’s approach. It only furthered my resolve that everything I’d concluded up until this point was correct; there is simply no way this was all a coincidence.

Going back to Assange’s request to Ratner, Ellen was willing to make sure the message reached the Rich family, but she did not want her involvement to be made public. She would need Ed’s help in order to distance herself but also see the request through, so she asked Ed if he would be willing to contact the Rich family in her place. Initially Ed was hesitant to do as she asked, after all he had little connection to any of this. For next two months he remained unsure of whether or not he would do what she had asked of him. During these two months, however, Ed grew increasingly frustrated by the reporting he saw concerning the origins of the email leaks. Having been told the truth, he knew the reports that he saw coming out of the mainstream news networks, the reports intent on blaming Russia, were completely false. Yet as the DNC started to blame the leak on Russia, their insistence growing stronger each and every day, the MSM continued to accept this story without any real scrutiny or question. Ultimately, **ask ed main reasons why* he decided to honor Ellen’s request. On December 17, 2016, he made the call Joel and Mary Rich that Ellen had asked him to make.

There is plenty of information in the public sphere that backs up this story as being true. For example, it is a documented fact that Michael Ratner was actively representing Assange and WikiLeaks’s at the time of his death (31), giving a plausible explanation for why Ellen Ratner would have been meeting with him in the first place. As we have previously covered, her public statements from her appearance on the Embry Riddle speaker’s series proves that Ellen Ratner did meet with Assange during the exact time frame that Butowsky says she did, in November of 2016. She also makes clear that during this particular meeting the topic of the DNC emails was brought up and that Assange described his source to her in detail. According to Ratner’s own recollection of events, Assange told her that his source was not Russia, but instead was “someone associated with the (Clinton) campaign.” He went on to describe this source as an “enemy” of Hillary Clinton. Here is her statement in full from the interview…

Ratner: “I spent 3 hours with Julian Assange on Saturday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London –“

John LeBoutillier (interrupting her to address the audience): “Get this, listen to this!” (to Ratner) “Go ahead”  

Ratner: “Well I did. One of the things he did say was that the leaks were not from, uh, they were not from Russia they were an internal source, uh, from the Hillary campaign or someone, somebody that knew Hillary, an enemy. He does not think they’re from Russia and he says that the Russians got credit for something WikiLeaks should have gotten credit for.”

Host: “Wow, how many people thought that there was part of the party, the democratic party, that was trying to put the poison in.. because I always wondered if there were people who just secretly wanted to ruin it for her, within her own party, do you think that?”

Ratner: “Well as you said she’s been around a long time and has a lot enemies. And the enemies that he has, or had, are mainly in the real estate business. But he hasn’t been in public life so he doesn’t have the sort of… enemies that all of us would get if we were in public life.”

There is also text message evidence that Ed provided indicating that he is telling the truth.

Here we can see a text where Ed is asking Ellen why she hasn’t been more vocal about what Assange told about the “email hack”. Clearly, this reinforces his assertion that he was becoming frustrated with the reporting blaming Russia. We see evidence he wanted Ratner to do more to expose this. We see her response is “I have.” According to Ed, Ratner is referring to the fact that she had told two people at Fox News what she had learned. She identified them as being Bill Shine (Fox News Co-President) and Malia Zimmerman (Fox News Producer). This information will become relevant shortly. So far, it seems like Ed’s account of things is supported remarkably well by the existing evidence.

Continuing his story, we come back to the point in which Ed decided he was willing to become directly involved. It was the day after these texts were sent, Dec. 17th, when he finally picked up the phone and called the Rich family household. He was able to get a hold of Seth’s father, Joel Rich, to whom he passed along Assange’s message. He informed him that Seth and Aaron gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks’s, and at that he believed Seth’s death might be connected to this involvement. He told Joel that his sons, Seth and Aaron, had been WikiLeaks sources for DNCs. Joel told Ed that he was already aware of this, and that he had known his two sons were behind the leaks. He told Ed that although he knew about their role in the leaking of the emails, he still had no idea who was responsible for Seth’s murder. He went on to say that this was his only concern, he wanted to find out who was behind the murder of his son. Joel also explained to Ed that he was reluctant to go public or reveal in anyway what he knew about Seth and Aaron’s role in the email leaks. His reasoning for this standpoint? According to Ed, Joel confessed that he didn’t want people to think Seth and Aaron helped elect Donald Trump. He feared that they would be viewed as somehow responsible for Donald Trump’s election victory. When Ed told me this detail, I expressed surprise, it was stunning to hear this was the reason for Seth’s family’s initial hesitancy to publicly disclose Seth’s role in the leak. In response to my reaction Ed explained that the entire family considered themselves to be left-leaning and progressive. They had, in fact, all been vocal supporters of Bernie Sanders. Although it was obvious from Seth’s career path, one that was heavily involved in the furthering the Democratic party’s aims, I hadn’t realized that this was important to the whole family. As shocking as it was, I could not deny that this information helped account for the family’s initial behavior.  

According to Ed, Joel explained to him that although he was interested in solving the murder, he felt that there wasn’t much he could do. Ideally, him and his wife would hire a private investigator to look into the case, but they didn’t have the money to pay for such an endeavor. In response Ed offered to help, if they wanted him to, Ed told them he would be willing to pay an independent investigator himself. Ed described his motivations behind his offer to me in our first meeting. He explained that he had initially made the offer in the same way that one would offer to cover the cost of a group dinner, an offer that is likely going to end up turned down, but that demonstrates a willingness to help regardless. He told me that he hardly expected them to accept, but seeing that Joel was distraught, had just suffered the tragic loss of his son in an unexplained murder, and had a genuine desire to find out what had happened Ed felt sympathy for the family. To his surprise, they accepted his offer almost immediately. Although he had expected them to decline and had largely meant it as a symbolic offer of kindness, he did not retract it when they agreed. He explained to me how he felt at the time, he had just offered to pay for a mourning family’s one hope at seeing a fair investigation into the murder of their son. He did not have it in him to take that away and knew that, despite his trepidation, it was the right thing to do. Having reached a general agreement, the next step was to find a private investigator willing to take the case.  

Up until this point in his life Ed Butowsky had gotten by without amassing much experience with the field of private investigation. He explained to me that he no idea how much it would cost to hire one, didn’t know who might be a good option, nor how long their effort’s usually took. The selection process began by reaching out to and interviewing various private investigators in the Dallas area. Ed explained to me that most of the candidates he had interviewed were very expensive, and it wasn’t until Wheeler came into the picture that everything had clicked. Ed asked around with some people that he knew and was given a recommendation by one of them, ex D.C. Police Homicide Detective Rod Wheeler. Ed interviewed Rod Wheeler and though he might be the right man for the job. He arranged to have him meet with the Rich family and according to Ed the two parties immediately hit it off. “They loved him,” he told me, and described that their relationship had been very good.

This is how the Rich family came to hire Rod Wheeler, someone who’s work ultimately helped provided remarkable insight in my own investigation into the case. Rod had previously worked a homicide detective in D.C. within the Metropolitan Police Department so he would have connections that could prove extremely useful in this particular case. He had also occasionally been featured on Fox News as guest, so Ed was at least somewhat familiar with who he was. Eventually Aaron’s wife, Molly Rich, drafted a retainer contract for Wheeler’s services and Rod started his work on behalf of the Rich family. While it was agreed Ed would pay for his services, he agreed he would exert no control over Rod’s work.

The Independent Investigation

        Although we know that Wheeler would eventually join efforts against Butowsky, Ed concedes that looking back on things, despite their eventual fallout, Rod managed to do a great job with the investigation. Butowsky had agreed not to exert control over the direction Wheeler took or to influence his conclusion’s. He claims to have abided by this completely but that he was kept up to date on Wheeler’s progress for one main reason; since his contract forbade him from interacting with the media, Ed helped act as an unofficial liaison between Wheeler and an investigative reporter for the show Crime Watch Daily, Michelle Sigona. Sigona had reportedly taken an interest in the case, and since she could not talk to Wheeler directly, she talked to Butowsky. He explained to me that this is how become truly involved, instead of simply fronting the bill and waiting for the results, he was being updated on a regular basis so that he could keep Sigona up to date. This kept him informed of the latest going ons in the case and in part how he has attained such remarkable insight into the truth today.

One of Wheeler’s sources for information was the lead homicide detective on the case, Joseph Dellecarma. According to Ed, Dellecarma provided remarkable details about both the base and of an illicit effort to cover up the connection Seth had with the DNC leaks. The notes that Wheeler took during one such meeting with Dellecarma, from their meeting on April 25th, 2017, were published by Big League Politics. The notes show that Dellecarma claimed to have been told by higher ups not to discuss details of the case. Essentially, he had been ordered to remain silent. The fact that Dellecarma was in contact with Wheeler is proven by this article and this is important because it helps back up what Ed told me, that Dellecarma ultimately much more information about how this case was covered up. Despite everything that would eventually happen between Wheeler and Butwosky, Butowsky still says that Wheeler did a great job with his investigation.

A few months into the investigation Butwosky spoke with Seymour Hersh, who was also looking into the case, on the phone. It was this conversation that was immortalized in the infamous recording that this book analyzed to help uncover the truth of Seth’s role.  I expected him to say that he planned it before hand, or that had hidden a device somewhere clandestinely before they spoke. This could not have been further from the truth. Instead, Ed explained to me, that it only ended happening by chance and he had not intended to record their conversation at all initially. As Hersh was telling him the inside story, Ed described to me, Ed had been trying to take handwritten notes for himself. He had trouble keeping up, however, as Hersh was speaking way too fast for Ed to accurately take notes by hand. We laughed as he asked me, “Have you heard how fast the guy talks?!” Ed explained that even in the best-case scenario his own handwriting was hard to deceiver, and since this was not the best of scenarios, he needed another option if he wanted to preserve the details Hersh was providing. Scrambling to somehow memorialize the information, he remembered that his daughter had recently showed him how to create a voice memo on his iPad. He decided to quickly go through these steps and was able to save a portion of Hersh’s words by capturing them on an iPad voice memo. This is why the recording starts mid conversation and why Hersh seems so open to disclose what he knew; it was an entirely impromptu occurrence.

Fox News Prepares to Publish an Article Outing Seth as the Source

Rod Wheeler had agreed to provide his information to Malia Zimmerman for an article she was writing for FoxsNews.com. In the article she would utilize Rod Wheeler’s statements as well as an unnamed source close to the investigation to show that Seth had been the Wikileaks source, not the Russian government. Because the contract between the Rich family and Rod Wheeler prevented Wheeler from making claims on the family’s behalf to the media, he had run things by them on May 16th 2017, the night before publication. A written statement Wheeler sent to the author of the article, Zimmerman, proves this unequivocally. It is provided in Butowsky’s legal complaint.  

“In the contract I have with the family, signed by Joel, Mary and Aaron Rich, I am not allowed to speak to the media on the family's behalf, but I could speak to the media about this investigation of Seth Rich's murder or other stories I was involved in. They knew I was a Fox News contributor and regularly went on television. I called Joel Rich the night before the Fox News story was going to be published, which was Monday night. During that 18-minute call (phone logs provided), I reviewed the story with Joel Rich, he liked it and was encouraged by the new leads. Joel already knew about the story because Fox had contacted him earlier in the day. He also suggested I contact an investigative reporter, Michelle Sigona, from CrimeWatch Daily with the information. I also spoke with Aaron Rich, Joel's son, for 21 minutes the night before the story came out and told him about the new information that had emerged and the story would likely be coming out in the near future. I told them both I would be commenting on the case and asking people to come forward if they had insight on the new information. I never violated the terms of our contract as I never spoke on behalf of the family.” (29)

The stage was set for the first mainstream attempt to tell the true story of the DNC Email leaks. The Rich family had been consulted and were pleased with the development, and Wheeler was clearly on board. On May 16th 2017 Fox News was ready to publish their article the next day, those involved were in agreement, and the public would be one step closer to learning the truth. All that remained was to wait for the big day when the article would go live.

Chapter 12 – The Fox News’s Article Ignites A Legal War

On May 16th 2017, FoxNews.com kicked the proverbial hornets’ nest by releasing Malia Zimmerman’s article on Seth Rich. In this article she reported, for the first time by a major publication, that Seth Rich had been involved in the DNC email leak. In order to reach this conclusion, she used quotes provided by Rod Wheeler and by another unnamed federal source close the investigation. This source claimed federal investigators had copies of Seth and Wikileaks’ communications. According to Ed, this source was Joseph Dellecarma. We know Malia Zimmerman is one of the two reporters who Ellen Ratner told about her meeting with Assange, and that Assange had named Seth and Aaron as his sources. We know she had three independent sources all telling her the same thing, that Seth was the source. Ellen Ratner, who was told by Assange himself that Seth was the source, Rod Wheeler, who had privately investigated the case, and the lead homicide detective on the case, Detective Joseph Dellecarma.  Despite this, this article would lead to an absolute torrent of character assassinations, legal warfare, and disinformation campaigns designed with one goal in mind, to completely discredit the article by painting its legitimate sources as right-wing conspiracy nut jobs.

The left-wing political machine was ultimately successful in this effort, at least it has been temporarily. In the resulting fallout Rod Wheeler was fired by the Rich family, receiving a cease and desist order, and was viscously attacked by the media. He and Butowsky were portrayed as unhinged conspiracy theorist with some sick desire to harm the Rich family, despite the Rich family being on board with the article the very night before it was published. Feeling the heat and fearing future retribution, Fox New’s eventually pulled the article about one week later. They officially claimed that it “did not meet journalistic standards.” Despite this vague claim they have never said what about the article was not true nor issued any particular corrections. The reason for this is simple, there are no inaccuracies to point to because the article is not inaccurate. It was not taken down due to any issue with facts, sourcing, the information, or standards, or these issues would have been corrected or at least addressed. They were not, and instead of making a correction, they simply pulled the whole story.  The truth is the decision likely had nothing to do with article’s validity, but instead had to do with the liberal press, the DNC, and the entire anti-Trump establishment desperately needing to discredit this article in the eyes of the public. From their actions it is clear that they would stop at nothing to achieve this, no matter what dirty trick needed to be used.

One of those tricks appears to be using insiders in the Fox News corporate hierarchy. According to the lawsuit filing…

“Within the network, rumors began to circulate that the story was killed by Sarah and Kathryn Murdoch, the left-leaning Hillary Clinton supporters and daughters-in-law of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch. One month prior to the May 23, 2017 retraction, Sarah and Kathryn Murdoch were credited with driving out conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly.. ..Kathryn previously worked for the Clinton Climate Initiative, and her husband James was a donor to the Clinton Foundation.”

This seems like a plausible explanation for how this happened. Ed told me the call had come in from someone at 21t Century Fox with simple and unambiguous instructions; take the story down no matter what, find a reason to take it down. Ed told me that they found out later on that the instructions had come Robert Murdoch’s daughter in law, who is well known for having much more liberal leaning political views than Murdoch himself had held. Despite the internal decision making process really all one really needs to know is this; the article was taken down in response to pressure from outside forces and not because there had been any issue with the article itself, and that these forces were invested in the Russian lie and had a desire to hide the truth about Seth Rich.

The Trump-Butowsky Collusion Hoax

        It is clear that the article sent the DNC and their political operatives into a panic. Simply removing the article was not enough, the left-wing power structure in the US needed to find a way to give the article the appearance of having been completely and totally discredited. To do this they did what they always do; they found a way to turn a potential political catastrophe into something that they could instead use to bludgeon Donald Trump. According to the filing this was done using legal warfare and involving a scheme that was carried out by attorney Douglas Wigdor. The first red flag came when Rod Wheeler told Ed Butowsky that he would be using Mr. Wigdor to resolve a different legal dispute, and that he would be receiving $4 million to do so. Douglas Wigdor was an employment attorney out of New York with a record of several discrimination lawsuits currently brought against Fox News. Wigdor stated in public that he was hoping to receive damages totaling $60 million from all the different lawsuits he had against Fox News, something that the filing claims is evidence showing Wigdor was running an extortion scheme.

To make this so called “extortion scheme” somewhat simple, I will outline the basic plan that Wigdor is said to have hatched according to the filing and according to what Ed told me personally. Wigdor’s aim was to derail an ongoing deal that Fox’s parent company, 21st century fox, had been pursuing; they wanted to purchase the British television network “Sky Television.” However, this acquisition could only go forward if British regulators agreed to the deal. This deal was something that had been in the works for some time. Wigdor’s goal was to come up with a story that painted Fox News in a negative light. He hoped this would cause the regulators to become reluctant when it came time to sign off on the purchase. Wigdor planned to do this by creating a false that Fox has conspired with President Trump in an effort to publish a story that falsely claimed Seth Rich has been the source of the DNC emails. This, he hoped, would cause the British dealmakers to question Fox’s integrity as a news outlet and to view them in a negative light.

Wigdor brought this story into the public domain by filing a lawsuit on behalf of Rod Wheeler that contained allegations that Wigdor hoped would help get in the way of the Sky News acquisition; allegations that Butowsky had pushed the story because he had been told to do so by Donald Trump. The filing alleges that in this lawsuit Wheeler altered and selectively edited both texts and email exchanges that he’d had with Ed Butowsky. These altered communications made it seems like Mr. Butowsky had encouraged Fox News to publish their Seth Rich story because he had been told to do so by President Trump. In his complaint Ed Butowsky claims that this is patently false; he explains that it is an impossible scenario as he has never even spoken to President Trump, let alone conspired with him to plant false news stories. Ed Butowsky claims that he had once jokingly told Wheeler that the White House “was anxiously awaiting the results of his Seth Rich investigation,” but that Wheeler “knew full well that Mr. Butowsky was joking,” and also that “he (Wheeler) knew full well that Mr. Butowsky had no personal connection to the President.” Butowsky’s filing goes on to say that Wigdor had been provided proof that Wheeler’s words were not misrepresented in any way in the Fox article(in the form of texts, emails, and audio), as well as proof that the Trump administration played no role whatsoever in the creation of the article, but that he went through with the filing anyway.

Rod Wheeler’s claims are then thoroughly debunked in Butowsky’s complaint. He cites the interview he had given with the Fox affiliate in DC, Fox 5.

FOX 5 DC: “You have sources at the FBI saying that there is information...”

WHEELER: "For sure..."

FOX 5 DC: “...that could link Seth Rich to WikiLeaks?"

WHEELER: "Absolutely. Yeah. That's confirmed."

It also links to a website by the name of www.DebunkingRodWheelersClaims.net. This website lists “texts, emails, audio, and video showing that Rod Wheeler had never been misrepresented by Mr. Butowsky, Ms. Zimmerman, or Fox News..  ..The evidence on the website showed unequivocally that Mr. Wheeler had lied to other media about them.”  If it has not become clear already, the fact that this lawsuit was designed to extort money from Fox News and to discredit their Seth Rich reporting, the actions of Doug Wigdor on May 15th of 2018 surely do. It was then that Wigdor requested the judge allow him to drop Rod Wheeler as a client. The judge granted the request, and Wheeler's lawsuit was officially dismissed on August 2 of 2018. Mr. Wigdor proceeded to settle the outstanding suits against Fox for 10 million dollars, just under 20% of what he initially sought. This gives the strong appearance that Wigdor simply used Wheeler to damage Fox, to discredit their Seth Rich reporting, and in an attempt to extort 60 million dollars from them.  

        Despite clearly being a fraudulent story created to further an ongoing extortion scheme, and despite the fact there is zero evidence that Butowsky has even spoken to President Trump, the left-wing media wasted no time in having a field day printing the story. Butowsky woke up to find his face plastered on the front of newspapers across the country and the globe, all running with the story and painting him as some stooge doing the bidding of Donald Trump. Butowsky described the experience to me as surreal, relaying that he woke up one morning to find his face plastered all over the front pages of newspapers around the country all claiming he had been caught doing Trump’s dirty work and trying to frame Seth Rich for a crime he did not commit. None of these newspapers had bothered to reach out to him for a comment or to hear his side of the story, and had instead run with the fabricated story without question. For example, NPR released a hit piece on Butowsky titled “The Man Behind The Scenes In Fox News' Discredited Seth Rich Story,” that painted him as a shadowy conspiracy theorist pushing a lie from the shadows. Among the slew of untruths and misrepresentations, they made it seem like Butowsky had been a diehard Trump supporter, stating…

“Butowsky also has been a vocal supporter of President Trump, on Fox, on conservative talk radio and in Breitbart News, among other outlets, largely for Trump's stance on regulations and finance” (89)

In reality, the two had never even spoken. Bustle.com posted an article alleging the same schmears titled, “Fox News & Trump Allegedly Coordinated A Fake Murder Story To Distract From Russia,” where they repeat the lie from Wigdor that Butowsky had pushed a fake story on Trump’s command. Despite what these stories claim Butowsky doesn’t just deny these accusations, he vehemently rejects them.  When I first spoke with Ed he told me that he hadn’t even supported Trump during the primaries, and that there were several candidates that he preferred. He told me Trump has no idea who the hell he even is, and that he’d never spoken to Trump directly or through an intermediary. Throughout my time speaking with Ed I have absolutely zero doubt, none, that he is telling the truth. The evidence points to this fact, his words and demeanor point to this fact, and nothing that have seen in my entire investigation leads me to doubt, even for a second, that Butowsky is telling the truth; he’s never met Donald Trump and Trump had nothing to do with this articles publication. This reality didn’t stop the left-wing media from smearing him and doing everything they could to discredit the Fox News publication and to blame its release on Trump. If they ruined a decent man’s reputation in the process, well, so be it. It would not be the first time, and won’t be the last time, an innocent party is ruined by the fake Russian collusion story.

        CNN, The New York Times, Vox, and more, also ran articles claiming to debunk the Fox News story. They claimed that it had simply been a “conspiracy theory,” and that this theory had “no evidence” to back it up. This is patently false, regardless of whether or not it is true that Seth was the source (it is true, but for arguments sake), there was plenty of evidence, and that evidence was cited directly in the article. In fact, as this book shows, there is far more than just “evidence,” there’s proof that is available entirely in the public domain. The left-wing media used a tired and common strategy to get around this evidence, instead of addressing it on its merits, they simply ignored it and claimed it didn’t exist. They then used the gold standard of media scrutiny, they called it a “conspiracy theory.” Their “debunking attempts,” when boiled down to their most simple form, are essentially them saying the following; “trust us, there’s nothing to see here, it’s just a conspiracy theory.” Why address the evidence itself when they can get away with simply dismissing it without anyone holding them accountable for doing so?

        The New York Times, for example published an August 2, 2018 article “Judge Dismisses Two Lawsuits Against Fox News Over Retracted Seth Rich Story” written by Ellen Fauer in which he clearly misrepresented the Judges statements to favor the official narrative and discredit Fox News and Butowsky. The filing described the unethical reporting and corrects what was written.

“Defendant Fauer wrote that “in his dismissal of the lawsuit [filed by Joel and Mary Rich], Judge George B. Daniels said he sympathized with Mr. Rich's parents, but added that they had not been personally defamed by the story – despite the fact that it included 'false statements or misrepresentations.'” Elsewhere, the story reports that Mr. Butowsky was intimately involved in developing this story that purportedly included “false statements or misrepresentations.” In reality, Judge Daniels never made a factual finding that the story included “false statements or misrepresentations.” Judge Daniels's order was premised on Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), and the order plainly states that under that rule, “a court 'accepts all factual allegations in the complaint as true ... and draws all reasonable inferences' in favor of the plaintiff.” Rich v. Fox News Network, LLC, 322 F. Supp. 3d 487, 498 (S.D.N.Y. 2018), citing Holmes v. Grubman, 568 F.3d 329, 335 (2d Cir. 2009).”

The complaint goes on to explain that the New York Time’s article took statements where the judge was summarizing what had been alleged in the suit, and made them look like he was forwarding the opinion. They explain…

“Throughout the order, Judge Daniels made it very clear that he was merely restating the allegations in the Rich's complaint. In one sentence, for example, Judge Daniels wrote that “the only conduct that Plaintiffs The August 2, 2018 story also included the following quote from the order: “It is understandable that plaintiffs might feel that their grief and personal loss were taken advantage of, and that the tragic death of their son was exploited for political purposes.” In context, however, it is clear that the foregoing statement is premised on the assumption that the Rich's complaint was true. Elsewhere Defendant Fauer wrote, “Judge Daniels dismissed the accusations against [Mr. Butowsky and Malia Zimmerman], as well, saying that even though the story they had put together was untrue, their behavior did not meet the legal standard of 'extreme and outrageous conduct.'” Again, Judge Daniels made no such statement that “the story they had put together was untrue.” He never reached that issue, nor could he have reached it under Rule 12(b)(6). 108. A paragraph toward the end of the August 2, 2018 article is similarly misleading about the significance of the order: Mr. Wheeler and his partners at Fox news had “embarked on a collective effort to support a sensational claim regarding Seth Rich's murder,” Judge Daniels wrote. Mr. Wheeler, the judge concluded, “cannot now seek to avoid the consequences of his own complicity and coordinated assistance in perpetuating a politically motivated story not having any basis in fact.” The foregoing paragraph omits the fact that because Judge Daniels was ruling on a 12(b) (6) motion, he was not and could not make any factual findings. Judge Daniels was ruling 109. Defendant Fauer normally covers court proceedings for Defendant NYT and he knew that Rule 12(b)(6) dismissals are not factual findings, yet he deliberately misrepresented Judge Daniels's order. Like the New York Times itself, Mr. Fauer is a partisan leftist who detests President Trump, and he knowingly smeared Mr. Butowsky because of his perceived affiliation with President Trump. Mr. Butowsky (through counsel) asked Defendants Fauer and NYT to correct or withdraw the defamatory statements in a letter dated February 6, 2019, but they refused. The Defendants' refusal to retract or correct those articles is further proof of actual malice…”

        Though the filing is written as a legal document and can be a bit confusing to people unfamiliar with legal language, the overall meaning is clear; the New York Time’s knowingly misrepresented the judge’s findings in the case and in a way that was untrue and that furthered their narrative that Butwosky and Fox News had published untrue information. I’ve included this example to show the kinds of tricks and unethical reporting that were used, but it is only one of many examples given. There were countless others all pointing to the same thing, the press was pushing a lie in order to discredit Fox News’s reporting about Seth Rich. I asked Butwosky if he thinks the DNC had any role in Wigdor’s scheme, or if they helped him create the story that he had been operating on Trump’s instruction, and he does not think they did. He believes, and I no reason to doubt, that Wigdor acted on his for his own interests. The DNC seems to have simply capitalized on the story, using to further their narrative to bury the truth about Seth Rich.

        Butowsky, thanksfully, decided to fight back. He sued many of the organizations and individuals who smeared him after they all had refused to issue corrections even after they had been provided proof that their words had been false and defamatory. Despite these lawsuits the damage has been done, millions of Americans have been exposed to these lies and now believe the smears. They bought the stories they were told by the press without giving them a second thought. They have been lied to so often and so completely that they’ve been conditioned to dismiss any mention of Seth Rich instantly as a right-wing conspiracy theory. The media had done their job, public opinion had been controlled to match their desired narrative, a narrative that was a lie. These stories were not the end of things, however, and as we will see shortly the DNC continued the cleanup operation. It is important to remember, however, that it all started with the bogus story that Wigdor had pushed through his lawsuit, a lawsuit that had been used to further an extortion attempt, and every that happened after was in the aftermath of this. In every subsequent interaction, interview, and legal case that would occur from here on out Butowsky would be unfairly linked to Trump, someone whom he’d never interacted with once in his life.

Chapter 13- The Legal Warfare Continues

DNC Stooge Brad Bauman and The Pastorum Group

It seems that the close call of the Fox New’s report spurred the DNC to start pursuing a more aggressive and preemptive strategy in order to ensure the continued success of the cover up. In March of 2017 the DNC assigned Brad Bauman, partner with the Pastorum Group, to the Rich family. This was first brough to Ed Butowsky’s attention through Aaron Rich, who called Ed and let him know they had been assigned Bauman by the DNC to act as a sort case worker/PR manager.  The Pastorum Group’s own website described him as follows...

“Brad is a partner at TPG where he directs all things communication and PR. He is the former executive director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus where he oversaw its legislative, communications and political operations. He has also been the communications director for various members of Congress and Congressional campaigns.”     

According to Butowsky, Bauman is fully aware that Defendant Bauman knew that Seth Rich leaked emails to Wikileaks. All of this raises a fairly obvious question, what on earth was the DNC doing “assigning” a left-wing political operative who knows that Seth Rich and Aaron where the ones who leaked the emails, an operative who just so happens to specialize in public relations and communication, to the family of a murdered ex-employee? According to Butowsky, the DNC had “assigned him to the Rich family in order to control them and keep the Russia Collusion Hoax alive.”

Bauman took umbrage with the idea that he had been “assigned” to the Rich family. However, this appears to have been exactly what happened. Firstly, Butwosky told me that Aaron told him on a phone call that Aaron described the situation to him this way, stating that the DNC had “assigned” them a PR (public relations) manager. Bauman tried to sue Butowsky for describing his role with the family this way, but his lawsuit was tossed out of court. From the filing…

“On March 29, 2019, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon dismissed Mr. Bauman's absurd lawsuit. See Bauman v. Butowsky, 377 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2019). That opinion is incorporated herein by reference. No competent attorney would have thought that Mr. Bauman had a legitimate claim against Mr. Butowsky, and the Bailey & Glasser Defendants knew the lawsuit was frivolous when they filed it.” (29)

The complaint gives several examples that back up the idea that Bauman had been assigned to the Rich family, and also that he had been responsible coerced them into opposing the Fox News story. Firstly, they state that Joel and Mary had previously admitted to friends and family that it was Seth and Aaron who had leaked the emails; after Bauman was “assigned,” however, they changed their story. It is further alleged that this change in attitude and the sudden desire to keep everything under wraps stemmed from threats that Bauman had made against Aaron. From the filing…

“On information and belief, Mr. Butowksy alleges that Joel, Mary, and Aaron Rich were told that Aaron could be charged with felony computer crimes if they did not cooperate with their new handlers” Apparently, this threat was delivered in a way that made it seem like they were not the source of it, according to Butowsky “Aaron Rich's lawyers have repeatedly alleged, for example, that Mr. Butowsky accused him of computer crimes and treason. In reality, Mr. Butowsky has never said such a thing.” (29)

He explains that, “To wit, they have accused their client of committing computer crimes and treason, but they attribute the accusation to Mr. Butowsky.” This shows the strategy Bauman had employed to get the Rich family to cooperate with their clean-up efforts, they threatened Aaron with legal culpability if the truth were to ever get out. However, they did so in a way that hid their true intentions and provided them cover; by masking the threat under the false premise that it came from Butowsky, they achieved their goal of intimidation but removed any liability or fear that they might be accused of threatening Aaron.

        Bauman and his partners have also waged legal warfare against anyone who dared question the official story. The DNC brought one such “legal warfare” type of lawsuit against Trump, WikiLeaks, and the Russian government, claiming that they had conspired to steal and leak their emails. This suit was dismissed based on first amendment grounds for Trump and Wikileaks. In regards to Russia, the judge found that there was “no viable claim against Russia pursuant to the Foreign Sovereigns Immunities Act.” Most people expected this outcome and had considered this lawsuit to be ridiculous. It was widely expected to be laughed out of court by those who were familiar with the details. Given that this is exactly what happened, to the surprise of no one, the motivation behind the DNC’s lawsuit did not appear to be a genuine desire to win the lawsuit. Instead the goal had likely been a public relations stunt; they wanted to further enforce the idea that Russia was responsible for the hacks. It didn’t matter if they lost, it was only important that this was the story that people saw in the headlines. They hoped casual political observers would see the articles about the DNC suing Wikileaks, the Trump Campaign, and Russia, articles alleging there had been a conspiracy to steal and publish the DNC emails, and this would serve to help further reinforce the belief that this scenario was the settled and unquestioned course of events.

Bauman and various lawyers working with him have also levied a series of lawsuits against Butoswky himself. He believes, and I would tend to agree, that these were designed to silence him and further sully his credibility in case he was to undertake any further efforts to expose the truth. He points out that even Salon.com seems to have picked up on this strategy, publishing an article about the lawsuits titled “Can lawsuits slow the tide of right-wing conspiracy theory? Seth Rich’s family wants to find out” In the article they describe the lawsuits filed by the Rich family and portray them as an admirable means of fighting damaging “conspiracy theories.”

“… the family members of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer murdered in July 2016, in what police say was a botched robbery, are suing Fox News and others for stoking conspiracy theories that Rich, rather than Russian agents, may have been behind the hack of Democratic emails given to WikiLeaks -- and was murdered in retaliation.” (Marcotte)

As is common in articles like this, Salon.com took absolutely no steps to substantiate their viewpoint and stance on who had been responsible for the leak. They simply assume that it is true and that there is nothing else to say about the matter, to challenge this assertion is an act of blasphemy and prompts them to use of the trump card of liberal debunking, labelling an idea a “conspiracy theory.” This label serves a clear purpose, once it has been applied to a certain viewpoint nothing more needs to be said. Bringing up facts and evidence to support the viewpoint is a futile endeavor after this point, the matter is settled. You can see this technique used time and time again by the liberal media to dismiss anything that might threaten the legitimacy of the Russian narrative.

The article goes on to describe Bauman’s efforts at waging legal warfare against those who dare to challenge the DNC’s official explanation. Salon wrote…

“Now the circle of litigants has opened up further, as Brad Bauman, a public relations expert who has volunteered as the Rich family's spokesperson, is also suing a series of conservative figures for defamation, alleging that they have spread conspiracy theories accusing him of covering up for a nefarious Democratic Party plot.

Bauman's case is of particular interest to me, because it illustrates the way Trump-era conspiracy theories metastasize, growing ever more complicated and strange as conspiracy theorists attempt to integrate conflicting evidence into their overarching theory — and how, in the process, the number of people who become targets for harassment and abuse can grow.” (Marcotte)

        We see the familiar technique of dismissing ideas that go against the official story not by examining their substance or evaluating the evidence, but by simply declaring them “conspiracy theories.” Highlighting this point is the fact that every sentence of the first two paragraphs in this article contain the phrase “conspiracy theory.” It is also interesting to not that they describe Bauman as having “volunteered as the Rich family’s spokesperson.” We know that this is a completely deceptive description, and that Bauman had been forced on the family by the DNC, had threatened Aaron with potential prosecution, and had been attempting to stifle legitimate news sources from reporting the truth. I’m sure that if Salon.com was given a chance to respond to my allegation that they have intentionally misrepresented Bauman’s motivations and actions, they would not address any of my specific examples but instead accuse me of pushing a “conspiracy theory.”  Creativity, it seems, is not their strong suit.

Further exposing the true purpose of these lawsuits, several of the lawyers have even agreed to settle the suits very cheaply if only Butowsky would only agree to refrain from making public statements about Seth Rich or the leaked emails in the future. These offers demonstrate the lawsuits main priority, they are not interested in monetary compensation to make up for alleged damages, but instead are only interested in preventing Butowsky from being able to get the true story out to the public. The lawsuit has the added benefit that even if he were to continue the effort to expose the truth, any story he might have a hand in will be tainted. Butowsky’s reputation is so severely ruined by the lawsuits, and by the conspiracy theorist label, that a solid percentage of the population will refuse believe anything he has to say. This legal strategy is summed up quite succinctly in the complaint. It reads…

“The Boise Schiller Defendants have, for example, offered to settle their clients' claims against Mr. Butowsky's codefendants for nominal sums if those co-defendants will agree to remain silent in the future about Seth Rich and the leaked emails. In other words, the objective of Mr. Bauman's litigation/defamation strategy is not to recover damages, but to discredit people like Mr. Butowsky and bully them into silence.”  

Mr. Bauman has also made a blanket warning to the world and to anyone dumb enough to challenge the official narrative. He made the following statement that was later printed in the May 19th 2017 CNN article titled, “Russia promotes conspiracy theory on DNC staffer's death after false Fox News story”…

"Anyone who continues to push this fake news story after it was so thoroughly debunked is proving to the world they have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath," he told CNN. "It either case, they should be taken off the air because they are either blind to the damage they are doing to a murder victims family or don't care, showing a profound lack of judgment and common decency." (Darcy)

        The date of this publication, May 19th 2017th, two days after the Foxs News piece about Seth’s involvement and the same day of another article that revealed a cease and desist letter had been sent to Rod Wheeler on behalf of the Rich family. The timing of this statement actually helped me answer a question that had previously been a bit of a mystery. It helped provide context that was helpful for answering who had altered Seth Rich’s social media posts on late May 2017, and why they had waited so long to do it. Recall that someone had logged into Seth’s account on May 20th and removed the section of the post where he listed his and his father’s emails for updates about a missing dog. Days later on May 22ndth, Seth’s pro-Bernie account, pands4bernie, also posted for the only time since his death, bizarrely denying that the account had ever belonged to Seth. Well, given that the Fox News article came out on May 17th, a lawyer for the Rich family sent Rod Wheeler a cease and desist order on May 19th, and Bauman’s warning ran in a CNN article on May 19th, it appears that the edits might have been connected to these efforts. It seems likely that Fox News pushed the DNC to send in lawyers, including Bauman, to carry out a clean up operation after the Fox News article. I believe these edits were part of the cleanup operation and were designed remove any remaining traces that Seth Rich had left online.

I believe this was likely done by Aaron, and when I ran this theory by Ed Butowsky he agreed.  We know it was around this time that he was threatened with legal culpability for his role in the leak and around the same time that it appeared Fox New’s would be revealing the truth. He knew the knowledge that Seth was involved would lead to people scouring the internet for his name, and he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t find it on MrGrimlock4’s post history, stopping an further connections they might make to Seth’s other, more politically outspoken, accounts. One of those accounts was of course Pandas4Bernie, which had seen one last post on May 22nd, two days after the emails were removed from the other post, claiming “Pandas4Bernie here. We are not Seth Rich, but we are Berners and we support the fight for justice.” This was the “group” behind the accounts last post. It’s obvious that this was Seth’s account as well, and that this post was made by someone, likely Aaron, as part of a panicked response to the Fox News article outing Seth as the source. It’s clear someone launched a massive cleanup job in the aftermath of the Fox News article, they scrubbed connections online that they hadn’t been worried about people finding before that point. That someone would have had to have had a cyber squad to hack into the hacks, or they would have had to have known the passwords Seth used. Given that Aaron was alleged to have logged into Seth’s accounts to delete things before it isn’t a huge stretch to imagine he would do it again. We know for a fact that he clearly had knowledge of the passwords, as he had told Rod Wheeler he’s already looked through Seth’s online accounts. My guess is that he was pressured into doing this by Bauman and the DNC goons assigned to the Rich family. 

        Turning away from the DNC’s direct efforts to squash any and all honest reporting about Seth Rich, we see that they were not the only one’s involved in the wider cover up efforts. Various high-level members of local and federal government were also actively involved in the cover up. Butowsky describes the steps taken and who took them in detail. His lawsuit alleges that the cover up began shortly after the murder when Donna Brazile approached DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and FBI Director Andrew McCabe. She asked them for their assistance in dealing with the political fallout that would surely result if the public learned about Seth’s involvement. They agreed to help her and took several fairly extreme steps to ensure the link between Seth and Wikileak’s would never see the light of day.

 Mayor Bowser enlisted the help of D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lynn Lanier. Lanier had first been appointed to serve as the D.C Police Chief in 2007, and had been appointed to continue her role in early 2016 by Mayor Bowser herself. Bowser exerted her influence via her appointed Chief in order to help control the murder investigation from a local level. The two of them, for their part, made sure that DC investigators were prohibited from pursuing any leads that could potentially contradict the Russian collusion narrative. Mayor Bowser was also responsible for creating the infamous “botched robbery” cover story that was given by police as the official explanation. She directed the local police to officially claim that this was the conclusion reached by their investigation. However, this explanation was widely from the start as Seth's watch, wallet, and several other belongings were still on him when his body was found. They also barred the lead homicide investigator, Joseph Dellacamera, from publicly revealing any findings that might indicate Seth Rich had been in communication with Wikileaks and severally limited what he investigative leads he could follow. Chief Lanier appears to have gotten herself out of the situation as quickly as possible. After having served as D.C Police Chief for nine years prior, only one month after Seth’s murder she accepted a position as Senior Vice President of Security for the National Football League, and she officially left her position about two months after his death on September 15th, 2016. Did her sudden departure have anything to do with her role in the cover up of Seth’s death? It seems likely. Given that she accepted the position about a month into the investigation, she must have spent at least a few weeks interviewing and negotiating terms. It looks like, for whatever reason, she set plans in motion to leave the D.C. Police at the exact same time this investigation opened up, and exactly when she is said to have been told to help cover up the truth.  

(30) Interestingly enough, the Big League Politics article that I have cited in order to support this allegation might also inadvertently point to Dellacamera as Rod Wheeler’s source whom he had mentioned on Sean Hannity, a source he says told him Seth had been in contact with WikiLeaks. Recall that Wheeler described this person as someone involved with the investigation in this way..

Wheeler: “...person, we checked him out, we have to check him out, very credible – he said he laid eyes on the computer and he laid eyes on the case file and he came across very credible.”

In the article “Seth Rich Police Detective; Department Gave Me Strict, Strict Rules, if I Talk, I’ll Get Reassigned,” Dellacamera is quoted as saying the following while meeting with Rod Wheeler..  

Dellacamera: “Look, look Rod, please, please do not quote me on anything…..I don’t need that shit coming back on me..if I’m quoted, I will probably be reassigned to CCB somewhere…..moving property around. There’s certain details of the case that we just can’t renewal to anybody, just for the integrity of the case. But, do what you got to do for your business and the news story, but please don’t, don’t throw me under the bus Rod.” 

This is noteworthy because in an interview with Sean Hannity, Rod Wheeler’s full statement just happened to be this…

Wheeler: “I will tell you this Sean; I don’t like to say things without telling you the person’s name, but I cant say the persons name because that person would be thrown under the bus.. and I can’t do that. But, this person, we checked him out, we have to check him out, very credible – he said he laid eyes on the computer and he laid eyes on the case file and he came across very credible.”

While the link is hardly conclusive, the phraseology used seems to point the possibility that they’re connected. Given that we also know he met extensively with Wheeler, it seems like there might be something to them using the same phrase.

Although it was clear that the D.C. Police’s investigation had been restricted form publicly announcing anything they might have found, I asked Butowsky if they had been allowed to at least conduct a proper investigation internally. I thought that maybe they had been able to look into things but that they had been instructed to keep what they found in house. He quickly corrected this false idea. “No,” he had told me, and went to say that the police had never investigated it properly, and that they were told not to look into it. It’s clear from Butowsky, who has intimate knowledge of the investigation through his contact with Rod Wheeler, that because of pressure from the DNC, the Mayor Muriel Bowser, and the D.C. Police allowed a murder go unsolved.

Andrew McCabe, according the complaint, also agreed to help in the DNC’s cover up. At the time Andrew McCabe was the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the second highest ranking member of the Bureau, and someone who we’ve seen had been heavily involved in the phony Russia investigation. He is said to have issued an order to FBI agents forbidding them from revealing any information connecting Seth Rich to Wikileaks. Further, he told instructed agents to deny the existence of any such evidence in the even that a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request was ever filed asking for their public release. Given his role in Crossfire Hurricane, actions like signing a FISA application to get a warrant to spy on Trump’s campaign that fraudulently claimed the Steele Dossier was verified intelligence, and his bias that was exposed through the text messages of Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page, it would come as no surprise at all to learn that he also helped protect the Russian collusion narrative by hiding the truth behind the DNC leaks.  

Aaron Rich

Given that Aaron Rich had been threatened with felony “computer crimes and treason” by his DNC planted handler, it is easy to understand why is so adamantly opposed to the truth getting out. However, there is evidence presented that before Bauman was ever on the scene Aaron had made efforts to hide his involvement in the leaks, although not nearly as fervently. When Rod Wheeler was first hired by Seth’s parents, certain parameters were set up to regulate Wheeler’s conduct. The Rich family told Wheeler what he could do and what he could not do. Aaron took part in these discussions and he repeatedly told Wheeler that one thing he was not allowed to do was examine anything connected to Seth’s email history. He was also not allowed to access any of Seth’s electronic devices or look into his work at the DNC (for example, he was prohibited from interviewing any DNC coworkers of Seth). Aaron told Wheeler that he already looked into all of these things on his own. This request raised suspicions amongst all that learned of it, why would Aaron want to limit that investigation into Seth’s death by limiting Wheeler’s investigative avenues. Wheeler was looking into a case in which Seth might have obtained DNC emails and was not allowed to talk Seth’s coworkers at the DNC. Any emails would have been stored on a computer or some sort of electronic storage device, yet Wheeler was barred from accessing these. Seth might have had electronic communications with Wikileaks that would be stored on his email or social media accounts, and Wheeler wasn’t allowed to access any of them. Put simply, Aaron Rich made it near impossible for Wheeler to get to the bottom of this case easily. The only way that these guidelines makes sense is if Aaron had been trying to hide something, and that something was likely evidence of his involvement. What other motivation could he possibly explain these restrictions?

Another example that shows Aaron is worried about the truth coming out came out through the course of the legal dispute with Butowsky. Aaron was responsible for ensuring the information Assange had on his sources stayed hidden refusing to sign a waiver allowing Wikileaks to reveal any knowledge they might have about Seth’s involvement in the DNC leaks. and instead his lawyers claimed they would do it on their own. They later retracted this offer and have never followed through. Despite vehemently claiming that the implication that he was involved in the leaks is a fraudulent conspiracy theory, Aaron and his lawyers made no effort to issue a subpoena to Assange that would allow him to disclose the true identity of his sources, and even actively prevented it from happening. Butowsky’s counsel describes the situation nicely in an email sent to one of Aaron’s lawyer Meryl Governski. They wrote…

• “As you know, Ms. Governski and I have exchanged emails about whether your client, Aaron Rich, is willing to voluntarily authorize Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and/or Kim Dotcom*** to discuss any relationship that they may have had with Mr. Rich or his brother, Seth Rich.

Thus far, it appears that your client is unwilling to authorize such disclosures. This is very telling. On the one hand, Mr. Rich boldly denies that he and/or his brother leaked DNC emails to Wikileaks. On the other, he refuses to authorize disclosures from the witnesses who are in the best position to know who leaked those emails. That begs a question: if your client has nothing to hide, why is he hiding it? Under Rule 11(b), you have a duty to answer that question.”

(*** Kim Dot Com is a hacker who claimed to have helped Seth with the DNC leaks.)

        This is an excellent point and shows that their actions and their story are not congruent with each other. There is no reason for Aaron to block Assange’s ability to name his source and provide proof backing up whatever he says if he really had nothing to do with the leaks. If he and Seth really had no involvement Assange’s evidence would exonerate them both. There’s no scenario where Aaron’s actions are consistent with how an innocent person trying to clear his name after having been unfairly accused.  The letter concludes with several statements that are pretty shocking, and that could have tremendously significant implications.

“Furthermore, you should ask your client some pointed questions about what funds may have been transferred to him or his brother through eBay accounts. And you should remind him that every trip to a safe deposit box is recorded on video and preserved. If the evidence leads where we expect it to lead, my client will aggressively seek sanctions against Mr. Rich and everyone else responsible for bringing meritless claims. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

        These few sentences suggest strongly that Butowsky’s legal counsel might have records that show potential payments Assange had made to Aaron and Seth. In our first meeting Butowsky told me that Assange had sent someone he knew a text instructing them to check Aaron’s bank records. It appears they followed this advice and might even have Aaron on video retrieving something from a safe deposit box. This would be damning evidence implicating Aaron if it ever came to light. The filing goes on to say that over a year a later none of the subpoenas that they had been discussing have been issued. The filing states…

“More than a year after the issue was first raised, and despite repeated inquiries from Plaintiff's Counsel, no subpoenas have been issued to Wikileaks, Julian Assange, or Kim Dotcom by Defendants Governski or Gottlieb. Contrast that with the fact that Defendants Governski and Gottlieb issued a subpoena within a matter of hours for the private communications of Plaintiff's Counsel. The reason for this disparity is straightforward: Defendants Governski and Gottlieb know that if Mr. Butowsky issues a subpoena to Wikileaks, the subpoena will be ignored pursuant to its policies for protecting sources. If, however, Defendants Governski and Gottlieb issue a subpoena to Wikileaks on behalf of Aaron Rich, Wikileaks will likely construe that as a waiver of confidentiality, in which case the damning emails would finally be released. That's the last thing they want, so they have reneged on their earlier statements about issuing their own subpoenas.”

In my first meeting with Butowsky I asked him what had caused the parents of Seth Rich apparent shift in attitude.  They had gone from actions that indicated they wanted to get to the truth initially, like hiring Rod Wheeler, going on the news and asking for information from the public, and reportedly telling some friends and family Seth and Aaron had been behind the leaks. At some point they flipped a switch, and started taking actions that were vehemently opposed to the effort to expose the truth, such as firing Wheeler, filing lawsuits against Butowsky and Fox New, and changed their story to friends and family whom they had told about Seth and Aaron’s true role. I explained to Butowsky that I could tell something had changed, that this was not an organic change of heart they had experienced, but that they had likely been influenced by outside forces invested in protecting the Russian hack conclusion. My guess, they were acting this way to try to protect Aaron. They knew that he could suffer severe repercussions for his role in the email theft if it was ever made publicly known what he had done. My gut feeling told me the DNC was exploiting this fear in order to get the Rich family to actively resist all of the ongoing attempts to expose the truth. Butowsky complimented my perception and explained that I was correct in my reasoning. He added that I had to understand something, and that was that the DNC had told Aaron he’d been guilty of “computer crimes” regarding government records, and the fact that they had sold the emails to Wikileaks could also lead to legal issues. It was for these reasons that he and his partners shared a fear that he might be punished for his culpability, and that this was almost certainly the cause of the Rich’s sudden changes to their behavior.  

Butowsky’s Battle Continues

        At the time of this book’s completion Ed Butowsky is still involved in the legal battle to help clear his name. I approached him entirely of my own volition and he agreed to help the best he could only because I had asked him to. He expressed nothing that led me to believe he had any ill intentions, did not pressure me in any way to include information that I did not believe in or think was true, and was overall friendly and genuine. There is absolutely no way that what has been written about him is true, and I have complete confidence this will become clear as the lawsuits continue to proceed. His account matched everything that I’d been able to learn up until that point, and even helped fill in some blanks that had remained unclear before I spoke to him. He did contribute to anything that I had surmised prior to his introduction in this book as a source and did not contribute to anything I conclude after this chapter outside of me using his information as part of my analysis. His help not only confirmed much of what I’d already pieced together but helped me form a more complete idea of what had really occurred. After speaking with him and reviewing the facts it is overwhelmingly clear the Butowsky, like Donald Trump, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and countless others, is another innocent victim in the left-wing establishment’s quest to frame Donald Trump for collusion with the Russian government.  

Chapter 14 – The Unearthed Truth

        The goal of this book was to determine and present the truth behind what happened to Seth Rich, and to also explain the profound effect that his death, and the circumstances that led to it, have shaped American politics. The story of Seth Rich and its connection to the DNC email leaks have had a larger impact on the course of American politics than almost any other event in modern memory, yet very little people have ever heard the true story.  That is a problem because it is impossible to fully understand what is playing out with in political world today without first fully understanding what happened to Seth Rich. It is no small wonder then that so many people are confused by what they see play out in front of them every day in Washington D.C.

 Examples of this confusion occur regularly. Half of the country was told for three years that there was overwhelming proof that Trump was a Russian asset, every day their expectations for arrests and removal from office grew, until one day the Mueller Investigation ended. It fizzles out unexpectedly, anticlimactically concluding the opposite of what the left-wing media had tried so hard to convince America of, there was actually no evidence to be found that any American colluded with Russia in any election interference operation. People simply could not believe that they had been lied to on such a grand scale, and by so many people whom they trusted and believed to be credible. Desperate for an explanation that fit their worldview, many concluded that Trump must have somehow thwarted the investigation and been able to cover up his crimes. This allegation gained momentum until it reached a fever pitch, and ultimately gained enough steam to contribute to a Democrat led impeachment from the House of Representatives. The House Democrats filled the airwaves with promises that Trump was finished, that there was solid proof Trump had covered things up, and that they had him dead to rights. The same Americans were left scratching their heads when they saw this too fizzle out with a Trump acquittal from the Senate after their trial demonstrated that there was no basis for the charges that had been brought against Trump. They have no hope of understanding what’s happening, they would need to know about Seth Rich’s role in the leaks to understand why it was important they pushed Russian collusion using every bit of power they had, to understand why Stone was treated so unfairly one needs to see that his conviction lent credibility to the Russian hack story, and in order to understand why the Mueller Report issued such sloppy indictments against Russians that they had to drop them at the first sign of a legal challenge, you would need to know that he needed to come up with someone to blame for the hack, he simply couldn’t tell the truth. In fact the entire Russian investigation was motivated by the desire to keep the Seth Rich story buried and keep the Russia hacking lie alive.

The impeachment of Donald Trump is a perfect example of how U.S. politics simply can not be understood without understanding what really happened with the DNC email leaks. Impeachment had little to do with what House Democrats and their coconspirators claimed it did, and in fact seems much more like it was designed to keep the Russia hoax alive and ensure the Seth Rich cover up continued. Democrats had been trying to impeach since the moment he took office. This is not hyperbole, on January 20th, 2017, Washington Post published the article “ The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun,” it stated…

“The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway.

At the moment the new commander in chief was sworn in, a campaign to build public support for his impeachment went live at ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org, spearheaded by two liberal advocacy groups aiming to lay the groundwork for his eventual ejection from the White House.” (Gold)

Despite this pressure Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democratic Party in Congress as Speaker of the House, resisted the efforts and stood against firmly against impeachment for years. Despite three years of accusations that Trump was a Russian agent, that he was an illegitimate President, that he obstructed an investigation into him, and more, she declined to seek his impeachment time and time again. Even in March of 2019 she still held this stance, stating it plainly in a Washington Post interview…

Interviewer: There have been increasing calls, including from some of your members, for impeachment of the president.

Pelosi: I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I’m going to give you some news right now because I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it. (“Nancy Pelosi on..”)

        It would not be possible to successfully impeach Trump without having the Speaker of the House for the Democrats on board. Yet we all know that they did, so what happened? When did Pelosi’s hard stance against impeachment, that she had held on to for three plus years, change? A September 26th article from Politco describes how the sudden change of heart came as a shock to pro-impeachment Democrats.

“Less than 24 hours later, after first informing her 235-member caucus of the decision in a private meeting, Pelosi walked out to a podium on the speaker’s balcony, in front of a wall of American flags, and spoke to the country.

“The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law,” Pelosi declared, describing Trump’s actions as a “betrayal of his oath of office.”

And then Pelosi went where she hadn’t been willing to go before publicly: “Therefore, today I'm announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”

For the Democrats who had been pressing for an impeachment probe for months — at times experiencing Pelosi’s wrath along the way — the speaker’s words were stunning. Just a week before, those very same Democrats were privately lamenting that their campaign to impeach Trump was quickly running out of time after several attempts to win public support had failed to materialize.

Now, the pro-impeachment forces feel vindicated.” (Caygle et al)

So, what had happened to change her mind, what incredibly horrific thing had Trump done that had been “so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan,” Nancy Pelosi’s own standard for what it would take, that she thought it warranted impeachment? As it turns out, what Nancy Pelosi must have considered compelling and overwhelming evidence was a handful of anonymous statements published in the Washington Post and an anonymously filed whistleblower complaint that had been submitted to the then Inspector General of the State Department, Michael Atkinson. According to the anonymous source’s description of the complaint in a September 18th Washington Post article, in communications between Trump and an unknown foreign leader, who later turned out to be Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelinsky, there had been discussion of a “promise” described as “so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community.” (82) Two days later, the Washington Post cited two more anonymous sources, who elaborated on the complaint. They claimed that Trump had “repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son,” and also to “work with Rudy Giuliani on a probe that could hamper Mr. Trump’s potential 2020 opponent.” (83)

This was the extent of what had been publicly revealed at the time of Pelosi’s decision to support Trump’s impeachment, which seems incredible given the vague and unsubstantiated nature of the claims. However, we now know that the whistleblower who had filed the complaint, Eric Ciamarella, had done so in coordination with Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff. In fact, it looks to be another coordinated attempt to take down Trump, featuring familiar names like John Brennan. Real Clear Investigations broke the story on October 30, 2019. In the article “The Beltway's 'Whistleblower' Furor Obsesses Over One Name,” they wrote about the whistleblower, Ciamarella’s, questionable ties…

• Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Further, Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah) left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” said a former NSC official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.                                                                                                                     Also, Ciaramella huddled for “guidance” with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff’s office had recently recruited from the NSC. Schiff is the lead prosecutor in the impeachment inquiry.                                                                                                                         And Ciaramella worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government.” (Sperry)

In January of 2020 Real Clear further exposed the plot in an article titled “Whistleblower Was Overheard in '17 Discussing With Ally How to Remove Trump.”

“Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella – the CIA analyst whose name was recently linked in a tweet by the president and mentioned by lawmakers as the anonymous “whistleblower" who touched off Trump's impeachment – was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues.

Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues.                                                                                                   And both expressed anger over Trump’s new “America First” foreign policy, a sea change from President Obama’s approach to international affairs. “Just days after he was sworn in they were already talking about trying to get rid of him,” said a White House colleague who overheard their conversation. “They weren’t just bent on subverting his agenda,” the former official added.                                                                                                                                   “They were plotting to actually have him removed from office.”Misko left the White House last summer to join House impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s committee, where sources say he offered “guidance” to the whistleblower, who has been officially identified only as an intelligence officer in a complaint against Trump filed under whistleblower laws. Misko then helped run the impeachment inquiry based on that complaint as a top investigator for congressional Democrats. (Sperry)

Clearly this was not an impromptu surprise report, this was a coordinated takedown attempt that they Democrat’s had lying in wait for the right time and was only initiated because of something Trump had said on the phone call with Zelinsky. Not only did something in the call set the plan in motion by those who first heard it, but the something bothered, or scared, Nancy Pelosi so much that she reversed her decision and decided to back impeachment efforts. Luckily, we have a fairly good idea what that was. The day after Pelosi publicly backed impeachment, Trump released the transcript of the call. The key portion that critics focused in on was this…

Trump: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike - I guess you have one of your wealthy people - the server, they say Ukraine has it. There-are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it, if that's possible.”

        This segment confused many people who read the transcript, but with the knowledge imparted to from this book those who have read it will know exactly why this paragraph sent the Democratic leadership in Washington into a full blown meltdown, abandoning caution and going all out to try to remove Trump; Trump was potentially closing in on an attempt that could expose that the Russian hack story was a lie, and also that Seth Rich had been the real source of the leaks. Remember that Crowdstrike had been the company that the DNC hired to analyze their servers after the leaks, and that no intelligence agency had been allowed to check their work. If Trump was able to have an independent analysis of the servers conducted it would inevitably expose the DNCs false conclusions and also show that the intelligence community had lied about the Russians being behind the hack. It would lead to evidence that would point to the real source of the leaks, and the world might learn that it really had been carried out by a murdered DNC employee. That would be a scandal that could ruin the Democrat Party for good in a very real sense. They had no choice but to attempt to stop Trump anyway they could, even if it meant removing him from off. Because of this, the public was treated fanciful theories using deceptively edited quotes from the call, all designed to make it appear like Trump’s requested “favor” had been one about Biden and not Crowdstrike. For example, in the article from The Independent titled “‘I would like you to do us a favour though’: The one sentence that could bring Trump down” one can clearly see the tactics that were used. Pay attention to how they try to avoid any mention of Crowdstrike.

“President Trump: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine...”
With the relationship seemingly now clearly defined, Mr Trump immediately asks for a favour, about helping him with an investigation. Essentially asking for help from a foreign power that could eventually assist him in his attempt to get re-elected in 2020. 

“I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”

“Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great... It sounds horrible to me.”
Repeatedly over the next few exchanges, Mr Trump pushes the idea of Mr Zelensky getting in contact with Mr Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, and Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to try and help with an investigation into the actions of a company involving Hunter Biden”

        This deception continues even until now, with the American people being told more lies by the day. The sad reality is that the American people will never understand the entire story unless the truth about Seth Rich is exposed. In the pages leading up to this I have told the story of how I was able to uncover the truth and also provided as much information as I could to show how I arrived at my conclusions, as well as to provide context for everything that was covered. In the final chapter I am going to present what has been uncovered without all of the explanation and context in the hopes that the full story is it is easier to understand when it is told without interruption.

Issues at the DNC

Seth Rich had worked for the Democratic National Committee for several prior to his death. He had made his way to a fairly high position acting as their Director of Voter Expansion Data at the time he was murdered. The DNC, which was supposed to operate as the leadership Democratic Party for all members and to treat all candidates running for office equally, had been taken over by the Hilary Clinton campaign. The Clinton campaign had paid off millions of dollars of debt that the DNC had piled up in exchange for the power over the organizational operations of the DNC. This deal was reached around 15 months before the Democratic National Convention would select a candidate to run for President as the Democratic nominee. This meant that the Clinton campaign now had power over the Primary elections, and it turns out they used it to ensure that Clinton was elected by rigging the primary process. To make sure Clinton won they used illegal and corrupt activities to influence the outcome of the votes, including operations to influence public opinion like planting stories with the press that painted Hilary favorably, obtaining debate questions beforehand from members of the press whom they had ties with so Clinton could prepare remarks beforehand, sabotaging Bernie Sanders with attacks designed to decrease support among certain key demographics, and trying to make sure Clinton was not damaged by media stories by vetting and dictating changes they wanted to see made to articles before they were published. Their efforts also included even more overt manipulation through the use of actual fraud to help Clinton and hurt Sanders, such as ballot stuffing, vote manipulation, and brining in voters from other states to illegally cast ballots.

Seth Rich, as well as his entire family, had been strong supporters of Bernie Sanders. Seth’s unearthed social media presence made this abundantly clear, and the fact that someone tried to hide it made it all the more obvious it was an important connection. Butowsky also told me that the Rich family had told him they all strongly supported Bernie. Seth became incredibly angry when he learned about a specific examples of voter fraud that the DNC had engaged in against Bernie. He found out that members of the DNC had gone to areas that heavily favored Bernie and had told large groups of voters, the majority of whom where Sanders supporters, a deliberate lie that led to their votes not being tallied; they told them that their voting district had been changed. They explained that because of this change it would be necessary for them to fill out absentee ballots instead of the normal ballots usually used for in person voting. The resulting absentee ballots that were collected, the vast majority of which where for Bernie Sanders, were simply thrown away instead of being counted towards the final results.

Seth confronted Donna Brazil in the halls of the DNC, furious about what he had learned. The two of them had a visible disagreement that was seen by other employees. Seth knew that the email communications of the leadership at the DNC contained proof of their ongoing efforts to rig the vote against Sanders. Judging by what Seth told Assange, security at the DNC wasn’t taken very seriously. According to Ratner, Assange had told her that the DNC server’s password had been “change,” and that password to campaign chair John Podesta’s personal email account had been “password.”  Seth was able to use this knowledge to copy the files off of the server locally, using a flash drive, and took them from the DNC. This is backed up by the forensic metadata analysis conducted by Bill Binney and other ex-intelligence analysts. Seth then contacted Wikileaks and had offered to sell them the emails he had obtained. He uploaded these to online file sharing webpage and protected it with a password. Seth’s brother Aaron assisted him with the leak in some capacity, and had most likely been the person who Seth was referring to in his email when he said…

“I also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems.”

This also shows that Seth had received emails that he interrupted to be threatening and that appear to have been designed to prevent him going public. Seth had told whoever sent them that he had already shared the stolen files with other people, and that if something where to happen to him it would not solve their problems. Shortly later, late at night on July 10th while Seth was walking home from a local bar, two people (judging from security footage showing the legs of two unidentified persons nearby) approached Seth. Seth and these people (or person) ended up getting into a physical altercation, leading to there being scrapes and cuts on Seth’s hand and arms. At some point Seth had fled, and one of the two people he had been fighting with had shot him twice in the back as he fled. Seth was found by police and taken to a local hospital, where he died a few hours later.

After Seth’s death the DNC launched an extensive cover up operation headed up by Donna Brazile. Donna went to at least two people for help, one who could control the local aftermath in DC, and one who could handle the federal response. Brazile asked Muriel Bowser, Democrat mayor of Washington D.C., to ensure that the D.C. Police’s homicide investigation didn’t release any information about Seth’s involvement with Wikileaks or the DNC data breach. She was helped in this effort by then Chief of DC Police Cathy Lynn Lanier, who resigned from her post just a month later in early August. They told the officers assigned to the case to publicly declare that Seth had been the victim of a botched robbery. They gave strict to lead homicide detective Joseph Dellecarma not to let any of the connections to the DNC or the Wikileaks release of their emails become public knowledge. He was threatened with reassignment that would end his career if he did not abide by these rules. Andrew McCabe, then Deputy Director of the FBI, was who Brazile asked to oversee the cover up on the federal level. He did this by instructing his agents to keep quite on anything that might expose what really happened and to deny the existence of any material related to the case if any FOIA requests were made for them.

The DC Police, in their heavily obstructed but still technically ongoing homicide investigation, obtained a warrant to search Seth’s computer. They were unable to gain access to it, however, so the computer was given the FBI’s Computer Analysis Research Team (CART), who had a field office in DC that was used. CART was able to get access to the computer, and this is how they first learned about Seth’s communications with Wikileaks. The FBI and D.C. Police have been able to keep this information more or less totally hidden from the public by engaging in a blatant cover up.

The cover up Seth’s murder was fairly straight forward; they blocked the investigation and forced the detectives to remain silent. The cover story that was needed to account for who was behind the leaks, on the other hand, was a much more complicated endeavor. When Wikileaks published the emails on July, they knew that people would soon make the connection to Seth Rich’s recent murder. They utilized the law firm Perkins Coie and asked them to come up with a cover story that could be used to deflect blame for the leaks. Perkins Coie’s efforts to make this happen started the process of crafting what would eventually become one of the largest and most impactful political hoaxes in modern history. Perkins Coie hired a private company to handle the analysis of their servers, Crowdstrike, and forbade access to any government agency.  Crowdstrike created a report that blamed the data breach on Russian hackers, whom they claimed had been carrying official order from the Russian government. Around the same time, Perkins Coie also hired a private opposition research firm to come up with allegations that Trump had illicit connections to Russia, and that the DNC leaks had been carried about between these two groups to help Trump’s presidential bid. Fusion GPS chose a British ex-spy, Christopher Steele, to come up with these allegations, and they were compiled in a document known as the Steele Dossier. The Steele Dossier was compiled primarily from rumors and by misrepresenting jokes that had been told while drinking as official intelligence. Other allegations seem to be made up out of whole cloth, but no matter their origin almost all them were completely false.

The two pieces of “evidence” that Perkins Coie had commissioned, Crowdstrike’s report and Fusion GPS’s Steele Dossier, were then funneled to various intelligence agencies through unconventional and suspect means. Nellie Ohr, an employee of Fusion GPS who worked on Steele’s team, used her husband Bruce Ohr, who was the second in command at the DOJ, to help with this effort. Steele also had associates with FBI contacts reach out and pass the information along, as well as meeting with and sharing his Dossier with the highest levels of the State Department, the CIA, members of Congress, and members of the media. Using the two pieces containing the false information as a pretext, as well as by misrepresenting their own asset’s attempted contact with the Trump team as them meeting with Russian spies, the FBI opened a counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. This investigation, that was biased from the start as evidenced from the texts of its lead investigator Peter Strzok, would be the mechanism the intelligence community used for getting a surveillance warrant on Trump team. To do this they had to manipulate evidence; the lead lawyer for Crossfire Hurricane, Kevin Clinesmith, purposefully altered emails from the CIA that stated Carter Page had been a confidential informant for them, and made them instead say that he had “not been” a confidential source. This was a necessary step in order to obtain the warrants; they planned to misrepresent interactions that had taken place between Page and Russians and claim they had been illicit examples of foreign collusion. They did so despite knowing that they had actually been carried out on behalf of, and with full knowledge of, the U.S. Federal Government through Page’s role as a confidential informant for the CIA. This purposeful and fraudulent deception, for which Klinesmith has since been charged, allowed the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign well into his presidency.

In order to successfully pull off the lie, and to lend credibility to the narrative that Russia and Trump had together pulled off the DNC leaks, the information they relied on to make this determination had to be distanced from its partisan roots and given an official release. To do this the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment was released, an official release that stated the joint conclusion of every group within the US Intelligence Community was that Russia had interfered in the election and that they had been responsible for the DNC leaks. The rest of Russian collusion narrative played out, including the appointment of Special Counsel, largely out of necessity to keep the truth about Seth Rich buried, and also to hurt Trump politically. Roger Stone’s prosecution and the bogus indictment of Russians, that had to be dropped when challenged, are examples of this effort.

The truth had, much to the chagrin of the DNC, managed to slip through the cracks and wind up in the lap of at least some people who did not have anything invested in continuing the cover up. A chance admission by Assange during an unexpected meeting eventually lead to a series of events that ended with Fox News learning the true nature Seth’s role in the leaks. Seymour Hersh had also been told the true story, ironically hearing it from Andrew McCabe, one of the people who originally helped cover it up. The DNC launched a massive damage control campaign to help. The efforts that the DNC took to make sure this reporting was discredited and to stifle future attempts to tell the true are staggering. They applied bribery to get Rod Wheeler, one of the sources Fox used, to contradict his own statements. They brought a slew of lawsuits against Ed Butowsky, who had paid Wheeler, and also crafted an absurd story that blamed Trump for the report. Trump himself, their fake story claimed, ordered Butowsky to craft a fake story for Fox News in order to deflect blame for his role in the leaks, an absurdity that the mainstream press fervently pushed without question or hesitancy. The DNC assigned a personal handler to the Rich family who bullied them into cooperation by threatening Aaron with prosecution should the reality of his role ever become widely known.

Unethical and repugnant as the DNCs tactics of legal warfare, intimidation, and press manipulation may have been they were incredibly effective, and they achieved their desired result; the effort towards exposing the truth was stopped dead in its tracks. Fox News took the story down and the falsehood was spread that it had been a purposeful hoax from the start. They were so effective in shutting this down that it has served as a clear warning to any other journalist or political pundit who might get ideas about exposing the true story; any attempts to counter the DNC’s officially sanctioned account of what happened would be met with the use of overwhelming force. No article in any major publication or any nighttime anchor, even those on conservative leaning networks, has since repeated the mistakes of Fox News by challenging the official story. The very suggestion that Seth Rich had anything to do with the leaks is widely considered a right-wing conspiracy of the worst kind, a google search of “Seth Rich” brings up hundreds of articles reinforcing this viewpoint.

This is where the story currently rests, legal battle and unethical prosecutions continue to bury the truth, but enough has been revealed to piece together an accurate and fairly thorough account of what really happened. Time will tell if the truth is ever able to emerge and break free from the iron tight grip the DNC is holding onto it with. If enough people take interest in the effort to expose the truth at some point it would become impossible for DNC and its left-wing establishment helpers to silence and bully everyone. Currently there are only a few select handful of people who have been brave enough to dare challenge the officially sanctioned narrative, so few that DNC is able to spend a significant amount of their resources to destroy each one of them. I believe, however, that they have already lost and only delaying things, eventually enough people will learn about this and enough will come out that they can no longer contain it. I hope that this book, in some small way, might help expedite this eventuality.

A Final Word

Anyone who has taken the time to read this book, and who has done so with a remotely open mind, will be able to see that there is more than enough evidence to prove that the official story is wrong and also that Seth Rich was the real source. Surprisingly, the vast majority of this information is available in the public domain. If there was one honest journalist who had the integrity, a genuine desire to expose the truth, and who was unafraid of the DNC’s intimidation tactics, this story would have been told a long time before I got around to telling it. I know that there are certainly members of the press who are capable of getting to the same truth that I did. They have better sources than I do (that isn’t hard, until I reached out Ed Butowsky I had a total of zero of them), they have more experience researching topics like this and also have teams of people who help with the legwork. That leaves only one real explanation for their total lack of coverage or curiosity, and that is that there is not one investigative journalist or mainstream member of the press who is courageous enough to tell the truth in the face of the potential consequences. The only exception I know of is Seymour Hersh, who Ed told me had finished a book that exposed Seth as the source, but that apparently, he couldn’t find a publisher who was willing to print it. Whether or not this was the only thing preventing Hersh from going public I don’t know. All I can know for certain is that I have waited for over three years for someone to report this story for with integrity and I eventually gave up hope that anyone would. That is why I decided to do it myself, and why I took the time to write this book despite never having done so before. The American people deserve to know just how much they have been misled by our government’s own intelligence community, by members of Congress, and by the vast majority of the mainstream press. This is the same press that claims to exist primarily to act as a watchdog of the government and to hold them accountable to the truth. Instead of fulfilling this role, they helped the government carry out mass deception. They’ve been at the forefront of the efforts to push one of the largest and most impactful political lies that has ever been told.

The DNC has also acted reprehensibly through their abuse of the legal system and the continued harassment of the Ruch family. They threaten their only remaining son with legal repercussions if they didn’t play along, forced them to attack the people who had been helping them, and assigned a public relations lawyer as a handler. This is after they’d been bullied by Donna Brazile for hiring a private investigator, were unable to get answers about who had killed their son because the DNC’s political concerns where more important to them than answers or closure for the Rich family. I understand that the Rich family has been through, and is still going through, an absolutely nightmarish scenario. They lost a son and a brother. They were forced to seek a private investigator because they knew that the DNC would not allow a legitimate investigation to take place into Seth’s death, and it’s easy to imagine their world has never been the same since Seth was killed on that July morning in 2016. It is them who I feel the most sympathy and sorrow for. It is for them that I feel the most anger and frustration for. No family should ever have to go through what they have gone through.

I know there are some who will accuse me furthering their suffering. They will say that I am telling lies about the Rich family and will blame me for causing the distress through the pushing of “conspiracy theories.” I’m aware that it may be the Rich family themselves who end up making these claims. My response to them or anyone else who claims I have caused them harm with this book would be this; I believe that the only possible way to end this terrible situation is to tell the truth. It may seem like a novel suggestion to people who have spent the better part of three years telling lies and doing everything they could to prevent the release of the truth, but in this situation it truly is the truth that will set us free. The alternative is that they spend the rest of their lives suing people who don’t deserve it and participating in the continued destruction of the reputations and lives of more innocent people.

If Aaron ends up having to face consequences for his actions than that is something he will have to come to terms with. He will be no worse off than the millions of other people in the U.S Justice System who are facing consequences for mistakes they made, and it is simply unethical and selfish to allow the lies the DNC is pushing to continue ruining innocent lives and tearing our country in two. Roger Stone lost nearly everything, Papadopoulos spent two weeks in jail and had his name dragged through the mud, Carter Page was spied on and accused of being a Russian agent, and Trump has been politically handicapped for the majority of Presidency because they have been blamed for the actions that were actually taken by Aaron and Seth Rich. I feel no animosity towards Aaron, far from it, I actually admire the courage he and Seth showed by standing up to corruption and exposing activities that they knew weren’t right. They put themselves in great peril to help expose the DNC and Clinton team’s malfeasances to the American people, and for that I admire them immensely. Their courage helped inspire me to tell the truth and the courage to expose wrongdoing and deception regardless of what it might cost.  

I believe that I have been able to learn more or less the whole story behind Seth Rich and the DNC leaks, and also how it was covered up. His murder still has open questions, but the general picture of what led up to it and what happened afterwards is a clear one. A lot of people will find the conclusions reached by this book hard to accept. It runs counter to a lot of things many people still believe, and it will almost certainly be painted as a partisan attack. I know many will have an interest in attacking my and the premise of the book without engaging in any attempt to refute the information presented or putting forth any effort to address the soundness of my reasoning. I was initially motivated by nothing more than a desire to learn the truth. Once I felt I’d been to do that, I was motivated by the desire to expose the lies that have been told about this case and to get the truth into the hands of the American people. I have done everything I can to assure that the information I’ve relied upon to draw conclusions is accurate. Everything I’ve claimed has been well thought up and is backed up by solid evidence that I have done my best to present. When it was necessary to speculate I only did so to a reasonable extent. I have avoided making false assumptions and other mistakes of reasoning. I did not give blanket trust to any source of information and made efforts to verify every aspect of this case that I could. I believe that the information in this book provides a thorough, well researched, and accurate account of what really happened. The American people deserve to hear this story told truthfully, and this book is the result of my best attempt to do just that.

Epilogue- The Elephant in the Room

        I will now address the one question that naturally arises from all of this information. It is the question posed most often by those who learned I had decided to write this book. If Seth was the source for Wikileaks and had been behind the email leak, who killed him? Everyone that I have talked to or that whose statements I have reviewed make sure not to accuse the DNC of this crime. A local level police cover up? Sure. A federal cover up? Yep. A false cover story blaming Russia that was used by the intelligence community to spy and sabotage Trump? You bet. An impeachment launched because Trump was getting close to finding the DNC server? Seems like it. But a politically sanctioned murder? That one was hard to swallow. They had no smoking gun evidence or direct knowledge. Up until this point I have tried to speculate only within the boundaries of what could be backed up directly by the evidence. However, I don’t think I would be doing my due diligence to cover this story to the best of my ability if I ignored one of its main aspects; who was behind Seth’s murder? A fair warning, I will be speculating in the following pages and I do not want to imply otherwise. I personally feel the speculation is reasonable, and warrants a real look at what I cover, but until that is done it remains only a theory. It’s a theory my gut and instincts tell me is correct, but it’s still just that, a theory. To make this distinction clear I have decided to include as an epilogue separate from the main chapters of this book.  

        With that out of the way, let’s start off with what we know, first looking at a clue Hersh gave us in the recording; the fact that Seth felt that he was being threatened by someone whom he was exchanging emails with. Here is what Hersh had to say.

“The word was passed according to the NSA report, “I also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems.” Okay. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know whether he…”

Now, who at this point might have been threatening Seth? Who at this point had any reason to suspect Seth might have the emails, and who would have been motivated to stop him from sharing them? The only people who might fit this description are high level members of the DNC. No one else knew apart from Wikileaks and those who helped Seth, neither of whom would have any inclination to stop the emails release. These two groups don’t just not have any motive to try to stop Seth from going public, they have the exact opposite motive and their actions make that clear. That leaves the DNC leadership as the only legitimate suspect for who might have been sending threatening emails trying to prevent the emails release. Is there anyone among the DNC leadership that we can point to that might have had reason to suspect what Seth was up to? Did anyone that belongs to the leadership of the DNC have noteworthy interactions with Seth prior to his death like a heated argument or public altercation? Recall the words of Rod Wheeler.

"There were some problems that Seth was having on his job at the DNC right before he was killed. And the person that called the father after I called the police to get information, that's the person that Seth was having problems with at the DNC. So connect the dots, here; it's starting to all come together."

Wheeler later identified this person as Donna Brazille.

“The high-ranking DNC official that called the police after I inquired about Rich's case was Donna Brazile," veteran homicide detective Rod Wheeler told WND. "Why shouldn't I reveal who it was?" (5) 

Alright, so we know that Donna Brazile had supposedly been having problems with Seth at work in the lead up to his death. What might they have been about? Well, one likely possibility is that Seth expressed his anger about how the DNC had been rigging the primary against Bernie Sanders. If this is the case, he might have made a veiled or explicit threat, which could have tipped off Donna off to Seth’s role in the recent data breach that the DNC had suffered. This idea is further supported by the actions she took afterwards to cover things up.

She called the DC Police and told them not to cooperate with Wheeler.

“I reached out the Police Department way back in March when the family first reached hired me to get involved. I didn’t hear anything from the Police Department for 2-3 days. Guess what I learned yesterday from the family of Seth Rich? The Police Department did not call me back because someone, a high ranking official at the DNC, check this out, a high ranking official at the DNC, when I called the Police Department they got that information and called the Rich family wanting to know “why was I snooping around?’”

This interference is reinforced by Butowsky’s legal filling, in which we learned that she directed the wider cover up operation.

“Shortly after the murder, the interim DNC chair at the time, Donna Brazile, reached out to Mr. McCabe and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for help in dealing with the political consequences of the murder. Ms. Brazile knew suspicions would soon arise, fairly or unfairly, that the murder was connected to the email leaks. D.C. police allowed the FBI to unlock Seth Rich's electronic devices, and the FBI obtained data showing that Mr. Rich had indeed provided the DNC emails to Wikileaks. At Mr. McCabe's direction, however, that information was kept secret with orders that it not be produced in response to any Freedom of Information Act request. For her part, Ms. Bowser directed D.C. police not to pursue any investigative avenues that might connect the murder to the email leaks. At her direction, local police blamed the murder on a “botched robbery” even though Mr. Rich's watch, wallet, and other belongings were not removed from his body.”

How quickly had Donna Brazile enlisted this help? According to an article posted by America First Media Group, within hours of his death Donna Brazile and Muriel Bowser were already aware of Seth’s attack.

“Within the last two weeks, America First Media Group received credible information from one of our highly reliable sources. We have learned that two high ranking members of the Democratic Party were at the Hospital the night Seth Rich was murdered. We’ve also learned they were there at almost the same time he was brought in via ambulance.

We gave said parties a week to come forward and do the right thing and explain why they were there. At this time they have not come forward to do the right thing. We will now name these parties as promised. The two were, in fact, former DNC Head Donna Brazile and current Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

We would like to know why they were at the Hospital for a “DNC Staffer” as the Mainstream Media continues to call Seth Conrad Rich.”(39)

It would certainly fit with the information given by the lead detective Joseph Dellecarma. But in response to the reporting by America First Media, Donna Brazile denied these allegations to website The Daily Dot.

“In an email to the Daily Dot on Monday Brazile said she in Washington state with CNN commentator Ana Navarro on the day of Rich’s murder, and called Couch’s claims an attempt to profit off the staffer’s murder.

“This is painful not just to the memory of a great young public servant, but Seth’s parents and his colleagues and friends… There is simply no truth to the claims in the article,” she wrote, adding in another email: “The claim is false, misleading and worse — profiting [off] an innocent death.”” (87)

In response Mat Couch, of America First Media, contradicted Brazile by showing that Brazile had tweets that showed Donna had indeed still been in the Washington D.C. area the night of July 9th and another tweet showing that she was still there as of 4:04 in the afternoon the next day on July 10th, 2016. In fact, she did not tweet from the Seattle airport until about 12 PM ET on July 10th. These indicated that Donna Brazile was still in DC when Seth Rich was murdered and hadn’t left for Seattle until later the next day, contradicting what she had told the Daily Dot. The fact that she appears to have lied about her whereabouts are incredibly concerning, what possible innocuous explanation could there be for this kind of deception about something as trivial as her whereabouts on a certain date?  

        Donna’s behavior clearly shows that she had something to hide, but what is to say that she was not simply concerned with avoiding the appearance that the DNC was somehow involved? Given the fact that Seth felt he was being threatened, and Donna appears to have been aware of Seth’s role, I am willing to speculate that it’s possible, if not starting to really look like, she was actively trying to dissuade Seth from going public beforehand. If she knew about what happened moments after, perhaps she was also involved with his death. How else would she have been made aware of what happened? Personally, I find the speed at which the cover up was agreed to by other parties, and the fact that there was clearly no preplanned cover up beforehand points away from it being an intentional hit. The keyword is intentional. The actions of Brazile look much more like the actions of an amateur dealing with something they were not prepared for. She was sloppy. She directly implicated herself in the crime by calling the Police and the family and making attempts to control whom they spoke with during an active investigation. Also, it wouldn’t make sense for her to show up at the hospital to “finish the hit,” as some have suggested as an explanation for her being there. Surely, if she had been responsible for taking out Seth, she would have hired professionals to do the dirty work. But what there is a better explanation for her presence at the hospital almost immediately after the incident, what if she had learned that Seth had been killed some other way? Let’s take a look at the details of Seth’s death. Hersh tells us that…

“And the kid’s hands — I’m sure you know — his hands are marked up, the cops included he fought off the people, tried to run and they shot him twice in the back with a .22 small caliber, and then the kids that did it ran — they got scared — didn’t take his wallet”.

Admittingly this also doesn’t line up very well with a political hit. It looks more like Seth had been approached by two individuals, something led to them getting into a scuffle, and as Seth fled, the attackers shot him in the back, possibly out of retribution for attacking them. Now, an organized hit would have likely targeted his head, and would have likely done so without alerting Seth to their presence beforehand. These aren’t necessarily always the case, but in general terms these would fit the “organized hit” scenario better.  

It really does seem Donna was involved throughout the entire affair, however. Donna is one of a handful of people who would have known that there had been a breach in the DNC servers, she had been seen arguing with him while working at the DNC, and Seth was being threatened by someone who was trying to stop him releasing the emails. All of this makes it seem likely that she was behind these threatening emails. There is simply no one else who would have known and wanted to dissuade him and who was so heavily involved in every aspect of this case

Given all of this, I think the most likely scenario is that someone at the DNC decided that since harassing and threatening him through emails wasn’t working, they needed to take things a step further; they would have someone approach Seth and intimidate in person. Perhaps the people who killed Seth approached him with the directions to scare and dissuade him, but not to actually hurt him physically. This would explain why they allowed themselves to be seen before shooting at Seth. We know, however, that Seth had clearly been afraid of being taken out. Remember his email, “if anything happens to me it won’t do you any good.” This was his concern, this was what would have been on his mind if strangers had approached him and started taking a hostile demeanor. Could this fear have potentially caused Seth to panic and attack whoever it was that the DNC had sent to intimidate him? The physical evidence supports this course of events. If they planned to attack him, why didn’t they approach him openly first? Why give him a chance to throw the first punch?

Well Hersh tells us that happened, a violent scuffle took place. If the DNC had hired a few people to go intimidate someone, traditionally organizations like this use local, low level street thugs to do the job. How do you think local gangster and street thugs would have reacted to someone getting into a physical with them? It might have been enough for them to, against instructions, shoot him in the back as he ran away. In this scenario either they would have called whoever gave them the job, or vice versa, but either way Donna would have known almost immediately afterwards if she had been the one to send them. This would explain how Donna found out so quickly, and why she went straight to Bowser.

It would also account for why she wrote in her book “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House” that she feared for her life after the murder of Seth Rich. In a 2017 Washington Post article they describe Donna’s fear….

 “Brazile writes that she was haunted by the still-unsolved murder of DNC data staffer Seth Rich and feared for her own life, shutting the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her and installing surveillance cameras at her home.”

Perhaps she worried that her involvement and knowledge had made her a liability to very powerful people. This reaction certainly doesn’t fit the description of events that she’s given publicly, that she had nothing to do with the incident and was out of town. Oddly enough, she dedicated the book, in part, to Seth Rich.

“In loving memory of my father, Lionel Brazile Sr.; my beloved sister, Sheila Brazile; my fearless uncles Nat, Floyd, and Douglas; Harlem's finest, my aunt Lucille; my friend and mentor, David Kaufmann; my DNC colleague and patriot, Seth Rich; and my beloved Pomeranian, Chip Joshua Marvin Brazile (Booty Wipes). I miss y'all."”

        While not hard proof of anything, this certainly seems much more like something someone who was genuinely sorry for what happened would do than if she had ordered him killed in cold blood. In fact the theory that it was an intimidation attempt ordered by Brazile that ended up going sideways explains almost every aspect of Brazile’s behavior.  

 It would explain her sloppy coverup, lack of a plan, and her expression of grieve following the incident. It would explain why she feared for her life afterwards. Perhaps she knew she had too much information on what really had happened, and that her behavior made her a liability. It would explain her leading the cover up efforts after, angrily bullying the Rich family, and lying about her whereabouts. It would explain how she knew about the incident so quickly. It would explain the forensic evidence and account for the emails Seth was receiving. Overall, it fits everything that we know. My gut tells me that this is what happened and that this is the only explanation that can account for every disparate piece of evidence without having to ignore a single one of them.

        Who might have been the killers? In order to answer that question, we will need to examine another mysterious shooting that occurred within 24 hours of Seth’s. Slightly before the clock showed 7 am the very day after Seth was murdered (July 11th 2016), two MS-13 gang members were found shot dead in a Mytrle Beach, SC parking lot. They had both been killed by gunshot wounds and left for dead. A local Newspaper describes the situation.

“Two murder victims found shot to death in Socastee Plaza on Monday morning have been identified.

Rafael Aguilar, 31, and Carmelo Marmolejo-Calixto, 33, died of gunshot wounds to vital organs, Horry County Deputy Coroner Darris Fowler said.”

“On Monday, one of the deceased men was found lying face down on the ground next to a gold Chevrolet Astro van that had tinted windows with the windshield wipers still moving. The other victim was slumped over in the passenger seat of the van.”” (95)

The double homicide of two middle aged Hispanic men went unsolved by local police, but it was widely reported that these two men had been members of the gang MS-13. They certainly fit the bill of two low level thugs whom might have been hired to do the dirty work members of the DNC weren’t cut out for. Keeping in mind that Myrtle Beach is about a 7-hour drive from where Seth was shot in Washington D.C, the timing works out almost perfectly. They would have had plenty of time to flee back to their home town after things went south and Seth was shot. Recall that this occurred on the morning of July 10th around 4 am. If they drove back to their hometown immediately they would have made it there around mid day on July 10th. They were killed hours later and after the sun went down. Police estimate that the shooting of the two gang members occurred at 4:30 am on July 11th.. The timing could not match up any better. Remember that police claimed Seth had been approached by two men judging by glimpses of them caught on security footage. Here we have two men who were killed within 24 hours of Seth’s murder, well within driving range of D.C, and a case that was never solved. I think it’s a strong possibility that these two gang members had been Seth’s killers. I think they had been hired by Donna Brazile (or on her instruction or request) to either intimate Seth into silence, or to make an attempt at retrieving the flash drive he used to steal the DNC emails. We already know how this operation went, and as part of the orchestrated cover up it’s likely these two men were tracked down and taken care.

        Unlike Seth’s death, where things went south and ended up turning deadly inadvertently, the violent deaths of Rafael and Carmelo look like a targeted and professional killing. No evidence was left behind, both men had been silenced and it had been accomplished within 24 hours.

I’m sure this chapter will be controversial, I bet it will be characterized as an attack on Brazile, dismissed as reckless speculation. I can only respond by saying that the evidence points to where it points. I cannot say with certainty that the conclusions I have drawn in this epilogue are certain. In fact, I opened the chapter making it clear that this would speculative. However, it is speculation that I think has merit, and that I personally believe is an accurate account of what happened. I believe people that people deserve to hear the true story and this is a key aspect of the story. It brings me no pleasure to accuse someone of something so heinous. I am interested only in the truth and giving people as much information as possible to help them formulate their own opinions. To those who think my goal is to make certain people or groups look bad I would respond by saying that I have absolutely no interest in how anyone comes out looking. I only want the truth to be told. If that truth makes someone look bad? Well, that is an indictment of their actions and behavior, not an indication of any bias on my part.  

Updated Epilogue - New Information Comes to Light

        It has been nearly half of a year since I completed the first draft of this book. I find myself facing the difficult task of trying to find a publisher with the courage and willingness to take this controversial subject matter on. I will say that I was incredibly impressed with one Dallas publisher I spoke to. They were willing to print the truth despite the risks and were unfazed with the prospect of taking on the entrenched and corrupt modern political machine. Unfortunately, they were a hybrid style publisher and I did not have the financial means to pursue that option. Finding a home among traditional publishing companies is proving to be quite the challenge, but one way or another this book will be available to the public, even if I have to give it away for free on the streets of downtown Dallas. I’m not mentioning the delay between writing and publication to complain or to disparage modern publishing houses, only to explain the presence of this second epilogue. New information has come out in the past 6 months that corroborates and matches perfectly with the conclusions I have presented in this book. Like much of the evidence in this case, on their own they can be shrugged off, but when examined as part of the larger picture they can often be corroborated (or corroborate something else we had previously been unsure of). I need to present and examine this additional information in order to provide the most complete, accurate, and verifiably true account of what actually happened to Seth Rich. I hope that by doing this I will not only be reinforcing my original conclusions, but also providing the people with a more complete account of truth.

Firstly, let’s look at an FBI statement that proves one of the most important claims I make, that the FBI has possession of Seth Rich’s laptop. In a Dec. 2020 Epoch Times article titled “FBI Has Files From Laptop of Slain DNC Staffer Seth Rich,” author Zachary Stieber wrote the following.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has files from the laptop computer belonging to Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) employee who was killed in 2016, according to a new email.

The bureau also has tens of thousands of documents mentioning Rich.

The FBI “has completed the initial search identifying approximately 50 cross-reference serials, with attachments totaling over 20,000 pages, in which Seth Rich is mentioned,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Parker wrote in the message to attorney Ty Clevenger, who is representing a plaintiff in Huddleston v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, a case dealing with a Freedom of Information Act request to the bureau.

“FBI has also located leads that indicate additional potential records that require further searching,” Parker added.

The Epoch Times confirmed the email is legitimate.

Parker, who is representing the FBI in the case, didn’t respond to an email or return a voicemail.

The bureau also confirmed it has files from Rich’s laptop and suggested it still has the computer in its possession.

The bureau is “currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed,” Parker said in the email. She also said the FBI plans on undertaking some level of review of the computer.” (emphasis added)

There is not for me to add here, I already quite conclusively proved this to be the case and offered much more detail about how the came into possession of it and where it is now, but nonetheless, this goes to show that the FBI’s official statements were lies from the beginning, and that my reasoning was solid. This confirmation helps bolster my conclusions. I hope it will particularly help convince those people who refuse to believe anything until they hear it from official sources. For people like that, it might be hard to hear that the FBI would blatantly lie.

The next piece of information is quite interesting and offers a plethora of new facts. I am not convinced of its credibility, but it makes some interesting claims that are worth noting. An article posted to the website “neonrevolt.com” that claims to summarize the testimony of a federal whistleblower, DEA Agent Ryan D. White, regarding the death of Seth Rich.

He comes to a similar conclusion that I did, and he believes that the two murdered MS 13 gang members were the two who attacked Seth. Similarly, he claims that the plan was not to murder, but instead recover the flash drive, and he states that things turned deadly when Seth attacked them. The two gang members were later murdered as part of a clean up operation.

This is remarkably similar to my conclusions, but here is where his account starts to diverge from mine (potentially). He claims that the two goons were hired by a man named Joseph Rosati, at the direction of Rod Rosenstein. I am not sure about the validity of these claims or the rest of the story, but it’s possible someone at the DNC reached out to Rosenstein for help with the Rich situation (my money is on Brazile).

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