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WikiLeaks, who published the DNC emails last month, drew more attention to the theory Tuesday after offering a $20,000 reward for information “leading to conviction for the murder…”
Shortly after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange again appeared to suggest that Rich was the source
during an interview on Dutch television.
“Whistle-blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks,”
Assange said. “As a 27-year-old, works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks
ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.”
Wikileaks, whose website allows whistleblowers to release information without revealing their
identity, published an official statement the following day that seemingly rebuked claims that Seth
was verifiably the source.
“We treat threats toward any suspected source of WikiLeaks with extreme gravity,” WikiLeaks wrote.
“This should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source to WikiLeaks or to imply that that
[sic] his murder is connected to our publications.”
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Aug 19, 2019 | www.unz.com
si1ver1ock , says: August 17, 2019 at 10:42 pm GMT
The Seth Rich story is coming back to life. A fellow named Butowski is exposing things.Twodees Partain , says: August 18, 2019 at 3:27 pm GMTHe claims that Ellen Ratner of Fox News told him that Seth Rich and his brother Aaron gave Wikileaks Hillary's emails. Julian Assange is said to have told Ellen Ratner.
The story is that the cover-up came down from now disgraced FBI agent, Andrew McCabe, to the Mayor of DC and on down to the police. They were told to sit on the case.
@si1ver1ock Here's a link to a detailed written article about the Butowski story and the lawsuit he has filed.Si1ver1ock , says: August 18, 2019 at 1:58 pm GMTNot everyone prefers viewing a video.
The Seth Rich story tells us how corruption spreads. The Mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, tells Peter Newsham, the guy in charge of the Seth Rich investigation, to shut it down.Then, a year later she promotes him to Chief of Police.
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Aug 12, 2019 | consortiumnews.com
Simply letting the name "Seth Rich" pass your lips can condemn you to the leper colony built by the Washington Establishment for "conspiracy theorists," (the term regularly applied to someone determined to seek tangible evidence, and who is open to alternatives to "Russia-did-it.")
Rich was a young DNC employee who was murdered on a street in Washington, DC, on July 10, 2016. Many, including me, suspect that Rich played some role in the leaking of DNC emails to WikiLeaks . There is considerable circumstantial evidence that this may have been the case. Those who voice such suspicions, however, are, ipso facto , branded "conspiracy theorists."
That epithet has a sordid history in the annals of U.S. intelligence. Legendary CIA Director Allen Dulles used the "brand-them-conspiracy-theorists" ploy following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when many objected -- understandably -- to letting him pretty much run the Warren Commission, even though the CIA was suspected of having played a role in the murder. The "conspiracy theorist" tactic worked like a charm then, and now. Well, up until just now.
Rich Hovers Above the Courts
U.S. Courts apply far tougher standards to evidence than do the intelligence community and the pundits who loll around lazily, feeding from the intelligence PR trough. This (hardly surprising) reality was underscored when a Dallas financial adviser named Ed Butowsky sued National Public Radio and others for defaming him about the role he played in controversial stories relating to Rich. On August 7, NPR suffered a setback, when U.S. District Court Judge Amos Mazzant affirmed a lower court decision to allow Butowsky's defamation lawsuit to proceed.
Judge Mazzant ruled that NPR had stated as "verifiable statements of fact" information that could not be verified , and that the plaintiff had been, in effect, accused of being engaged in wrongdoing without persuasive sourcing language.
Isikoff: Russians started it. (Wikipedia)
Imagine! -- "persuasive sourcing" required to separate fact from opinion and axes to grind! An interesting precedent to apply to the ins and outs of Russiagate. In the courts, at least, this is now beginning to happen. And NPR and others in similarly vulnerable positions are scurrying around for allies.??The day after Judge Mazzant's decision, NPR enlisted help from discredited Yahoo! News pundit Michael Isikoff (author, with David Corn, of the fiction-posing-as-fact novel Russian Roulette ). NPR gave Isikoff 37 minutes on its popular Fresh Air program to spin his yarn about how the Seth Rich story got started. You guessed it; the Russians started it . No, we are not making this up.
It is far from clear that Isikoff can be much help to NPR in the libel case against it. Isikoff's own writings on Russiagate are notably lacking in "verifiable statements of fact" -- information that cannot be verified. Watch, for example, his recent interview with Consortium News Editor Joe Lauria on CN Live!
Isikoff admitted to Lauria that he never saw the classified Russian intelligence document reportedly indicating that three days after Rich's murder the Russian SVR foreign intelligence service planted a story about Rich having been the leaker and was killed for it. This Russian intelligence "bulletin," as Isikoff called it, was supposedly placed on a bizarre website that Isikoff admitted was an unlikely place for Russia to spread disinformation. He acknowledged that he only took the word of the former prosecutor in the Rich case about the existence of this classified Russian document.
In any case, The Washington Post , had already debunked Isikoff's claim (which later in his article he switched to being only "purported") by pointing out that Americans had already tweeted the theory of Rich's murder days before the alleged Russian intervention.
' Persuasive Sourcing' & Discovery ??
Butowsky's libel lawsuit can now proceed to discovery, which will include demands for documents and depositions that are likely to shed light on whatever role Rich may have played in leaking to WikiLeaks . If the government obstructs or tries to slow-roll the case, we shall have to wait and see, for example, if the court will acquiesce to the familiar government objection that information regarding Rich's murder must be withheld as a state secret? Hmmm. What would that tell us?
Butowsky: Suit could reveal critical information. (Flickr)
During discovery in a separate court case, the government was unable to produce a final forensic report on the "hacking" of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC-hired cyber firm, CrowdStrike, failed to complete such a report, and that was apparently okay with then FBI Director James Comey, who did not require one.
The incomplete, redacted, draft, second-hand "forensics" that Comey settled for from CrowdStrike does not qualify as credible evidence -- much less "persuasive sourcing" to support the claim that the Russians "hacked" into the DNC. Moreover, CrowdStrike has a dubious reputation for professionalism and a well known anti-Russia bias.
The thorny question of "persuasive sourcing," came up even more starkly on July 1, when federal Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Robert Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency's supposed attempt to interfere via social media in the 2016 election. Middle school-level arithmetic can prove the case that the IRA's use of social media to support Trump is ludicrous on its face.
Russia-gate Rubble
As journalist Patrick Lawrence put it recently: "Three years after the narrative we call Russiagate was framed and incessantly promoted, it crumbles into rubble as we speak." Falling syllogism! Step nimbly to one side.
The "conspiracy theorist" epithet is not likely to much longer block attention to the role, if any, played by Rich -- the more so since some players who say they were directly involved with Rich are coming forward.
In a long interview with Lauria a few months ago in New Zealand aired this month on CN Live! , Kim Dotcom provided a wealth of detail, based on what he described as first-hand knowledge, regarding how Democratic National Committee documents were leaked to WikiLeaks in 2016.
The major takeaway: the evidence presented by Dotcom about Seth Rich can be verified or disproven if President Trump summons the courage to order the director of NSA to dig out the relevant data, including the conversations Dotcom says he had with Rich and Rich may have had with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Dotcom said he put Rich in touch with a middleman to transfer the DNC files to WikiLeaks . Sadly, Trump has flinched more than once rather than confront the Deep State -- and this time there are a bunch of very well connected, senior Deep State practitioners who could face prosecution .
Another sign that Rich's story is likely to draw new focus is the virulent character assassination indulged in by former investigative journalist James Risen.
Not Risen to the Challenge
Risen: Called Binney a "conspiracy theorist." (Flickr)
On August 5, in an interview on The Hill's "Rising," Risen chose to call former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney -- you guessed it -- a "conspiracy theorist" on Russia-gate, with no demurral, much less pushback, from the hosts.
The having-done-good-work-in-the-past-and-now-not-so-much Risen can be considered a paradigm for what has happened to so many Kool-Aid drinking journalists. Jim's transition from investigative journalist to stenographer is, nonetheless unsettling. Contributing causes? It appears that the traditional sources within the intelligence agencies, whom Risen was able to cultivate discreetly in the past, are too fearful now to even talk to him, lest they get caught by one or two of the myriad surveillance systems in play.
Those at the top of the relevant agencies, however, are only too happy to provide grist. Journalists have to make a living, after all. Topic A, of course, is Russian "interference" in the 2016 election. And, of course, "There can be little doubt" the Russians did it.
"Big Jim" Risen, as he is known, jumped on the bandwagon as soon as he joined The Intercept , with a fulsome article on February 17, 2018 titled " Is Donald Trump a Traitor? " Here's an excerpt:
"The evidence that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win is already compelling, and it grows stronger by the day.
"There can be little doubt now that Russian intelligence officials were behind an effort to hack the DNC's computers and steal emails and other information from aides to Hillary Clinton as a means of damaging her presidential campaign. Russian intelligence also used fake social media accounts and other tools to create a global echo chamber both for stories about the emails and for anti-Clinton lies dressed up to look like news.
"To their disgrace, editors and reporters at American news organizations greatly enhanced the Russian echo chamber, eagerly writing stories about Clinton and the Democratic Party based on the emails, while showing almost no interest during the presidential campaign in exactly how those emails came to be disclosed and distributed." (sic)
Poor Jim. He shows himself just as susceptible as virtually all of his fellow corporate journalists to the epidemic-scale HWHW virus (Hillary Would Have Won) that set in during Nov. 2016 and for which the truth seems to be no cure. From his perch at The Intercept , Risen will continue to try to shape the issues. Russiagaters major ally, of course, is the corporate media which has most Americans pretty much under their thumb.
Incidentally, neither The New York Times, The Washington Post , nor The Wall Street Journal has printed or posted a word about Judge Mazzant's ruling on the Butowsky suit.
Mark Twain is said to have warned, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!" After three years of "Russia-Russia-Russia" in the corporate -- and even in some "progressive" -- media, this conditioning will not be easy to reverse.
Here's how one astute observer with a sense of humor described the situation last week, in a comment under one of my recent pieces on Consortium News:
" One can write the most thought-out and well documented academic-like essays, articles and reports and the true believers in Russiagate will dismiss it all with a mere flick of their wrist. The mockery and scorn directed towards those of us who knew the score from day one won't relent. They could die and go to heaven and ask god what really happened during the 2016 election. God would reply to them in no uncertain terms that Putin and the Russians had absolutely nothing to do with anything in '16, and they'd all throw up their hands and say, 'aha! So, God's in on this too!' It's the great lie that won't die."
I'm not so sure. It is likely to be a while though before this is over.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. Ray was a CIA analyst for 27 years; in retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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Jul 18, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
David Habakkuk , 16 July 2019 at 01:14 PM
Larry,turcopolier , 16 July 2019 at 02:34 PMOne does not like to admit to having been one of John Brennan's 'useful idiots' -- I had thought I could see through any of the 'active measures' which he and his co-conspirators, on both sides of the Atlantic, could dream up. But I had swallowed whole the notion that Michael Flynn had been stupid enough knowingly to get involved in Erdoğan's feud with Gülen.
In fairness, however, I do think that when dealing with spiders like the former head of the CIA, a prudent fly needs to be sure he, or she, gets competent legal advice at the outset.
It may perhaps be interesting to put your account together with a post by 'Sundance' on the 'Conservative Treehouse' site on 14 July, headlined 'Devin Nunes Discusses Upcoming Mueller Testimony '
This takes up the issue, on which its author has commented extensively, of illegitimate access by contractors to the databases of NSA intercepts -- an issue which is clearly bound up with that of the use of such material to create the 'web' in which Flynn found himself hopelessly entangled.
The post by 'Sundance' suggests, just as you do, that the driving force behind what has happened was actually John Brennan. The April 2017 ruling by FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer does not definitely establish that the illegitimate access of contractors started in 2012, but it definitely strongly suggests that it did.
Reading the 6 September 'Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity' memorandum to Obama, entitled 'Is Syria a Trap?', whose signatories included both you and Colonel Lang, it seemed overwhelmingly likely to some of us who were familiar with both your writings that Brennan had to have been involved in a conspiracy with the Turks, Saudis, and Qataris.
(To my surprise, this can no longer be accessed at the 'Consortium News' site. However, it is still available at http://www.shoah.org.uk/2013/09/10/page/2/ .)
One relevant question related to whether the role of the Americans involved in this conspiracy was simply 'ex post facto' exploitation of the patent 'false flag' sarin atrocity at Ghouta the previous 21 August to attempt to inveigle the United States into toppling Assad, or whether there was 'ex ante' complicity.
Moreover, if, as the memorandum asserted, 'British officials' were also aware that the 'most reliable intelligence' exonerated the Syrian government, rather fundamental questions arose as to how the JIC had felt able to claim precisely the reverse in support of David Cameron's unsuccessful attempt on 29 August to win Commons' support for British participation in air strikes.
At the time, the Director General, Defence and Intelligence at the FCO was one Robert Hannigan, who in April 2014 would be appointed as Director of GCHQ. The National Security Adviser was a certain Sir Kim Darroch, whose appointment as Ambassador to the U.S. would be announced in August 2015. Both have been in the news, in relation to 'Russiagate.'
Obviously, the same question arises about both of them as about Brennan: are they 'Gleiwitz types', who were actively complicit in preparing a murderous 'false flag', or were they simply part of a rather stupid Anglo-American 'dog', whom the 'tail', in the shape of the jihadists and their Turkish, Saudi and Qatari backers, could 'wag', as they chose?
From the articles which Seymour Hersh published in the 'London Review of Books', and other materials, it became evident that the Defense Intelligence Agency, then headed by General Flynn, had been aware of the likelihood of fresh 'false flags' -- after the small scale incidents in spring 2013.
And it was clear enough, if one bothered to study the 'open source' material at all carefully, that the DIA had been a key locus of opposition to the strategies being pursued by Brennan, together with his British co-conspirators.
Accordingly, the fact that an 'interagency memorandum of understanding', which according to Collyer's judgement looks as though it may well date from 2012 -- the year Brennan was appointed to head the CIA -- appears to have led, in that year, to the granting of access to the material, through the FBI, to outside contractors, looks somewhat interesting. (This is well covered by 'Sundance'.)
So, I find myself asking whether in fact this gross abuse of the role of the NSA was not linked at the outset to the divisions within the American intelligence apparatus and military about policy towards the Middle East, and also whether this may not be relevant to assessing the role of Robert Mueller, who was FBI Director through until September 2013.
An argument that 'Sundance' has repeatedly made is that a lot of what was happening in mid-2016, including the dossier attributed to Steele, had to do with the need to find justifications for these questionable surveillance operations.
While I think there is something in this, I have long thought that the discovery that a mass of material exfiltrated from the DNC, and was going to be published by 'WikiLeaks', and the subsequent murder of Seth Rich, are likely to have been critically important triggers.
Among other things, I do not think that the version given by 'Sundance' can explain the air of panic-stricken improvisation found alike in the dossier, and the claims about the 'digital forensics' made by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait.
I see that there has now been a dramatic escalation in the legal battles which began when Ed Butowsky bought his initial action against David Folkenflik and his 'NPR' colleagues in June 2018. The discovery process in that action was followed by an 'Amended Complaint' on 5 March this year.
A week later, Butowsky filed a new action, in which the suggestion of a very-wide ranging conspiracy to suppress the truth about both the DNC leaks and Rich's murder was turned into a catalogue of defamation claims against a long list of people, including, as well as a variety of lawyers involved, CNN, the'Nw York Times', Vox, and the DNC.
On 9 July, Michael Isikoff published a story alleging that the claims about Rich and his murder were the result of a Russian 'active measures' operation -- to use a favourite phrase of TTG's.
A useful account, with links, is provided by our colleague 'b', at 'Moon of Alabama', at https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/07/isikoff-who-first-peddled-the-fake-steele-dossier-invents-new-russian-influence-story.html .
Concluding his piece, 'b' wrote:
'That Seth Rich was wacked because he stole the DNC emails and transferred them to Wikileaks is a conspiracy theory. It is possible and even plausible, but there is no evidence to confirm it. Many people seem to believe it because it makes more sense than the competing conspiracy theory, that Russia hacked the DNC and handed the emails to Wikileaks. Isikoff's claim, that Russia planted the Rich conspiracy theory, has no sound base. That theory existed before anything "Russian" mentioned it.'
As it happens, Butowsky and his lawyer, Ty Clevenger, obviously decided it was time to, as it were, 'unmask their batteries', and provide some of the evidence they have been accumulating.
There is another useful post by 'Sundance', which in turn links to a very interesting post on the Gateway Pundit' site. From there, you can access both Clevenger's blog post, and the text of the 'Amended Complaint.'
It seems likely that Butowsky and Clevenger were pushed into acting a bit sooner than they had intended. The fact that the name of Ellen Ratner, clearly a pivotal participant, was misspellled 'Rattner' in the 'Amended Complaint', is likely to be an indication of this.
However, I also think that Clevenger, who seems to me a first-class 'ferret', could do with the services of an old-style secretary, who checked his productions before they went out.
As I have previously mentioned, I testified several times in Collyer's Washington district court on non-FISA matters. My impression was that she is a very ambitious woman who wishes always to do DoJ's bidding.David Habakkuk -> turcopolier ... , 18 July 2019 at 01:28 PM
Pat,Your recollections of Collyer had, unfortunately, slipped my mind when I posted my comment above. So, unfortunately, had Larry's post on Judge Caroline M. Craven's denial in her report dated 17 April 2019 of the Motion to Dismiss filed by David Folkenflik and his NPR colleagues in the defamation case brought against them by Ed Butowsky.
At the time of his post, the full text of the judgement was only available on PACER, which requires a subscription. However, looking at the 'Court Listener' site, I now see that both it and some other key documents in the case are freely available.
(See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7244731/butowsky-v-folkenflik/ .)
Reading the full text of Ms. Craven's report, I can see quite how well justified was Larry's suggestion in his post that Folkenflik and NPR were on a very sticky wicket indeed (as we say in England.)
And I can also see more clearly why, following the judgement, Butowsky and Ty Clevenger felt they were in a position to launch an action both against some of the major legal players in the cover-up of the fact that the materials published by the DNC were leaked by Seth Rich, not hacked by the Russians, and also key disseminators of the cover-up, CNN, the NYT, and Vox.
The most important documents in that case are also now free available on 'Court Listener', at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14681570/butowsky-v-gottlieb/ .
What looks to have happened subsequently is a natural enough process of escalation.
Among those who rather actively promoted the hogwash attributed to Christopher Steele was Michael Isikoff, who is, apparently, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News. In April, he was reported in 'Vanity Fair' conceding that 'I think it's fair to say that all of us should have approached this, in retrospect, with more skepticism'.
Any 'investigative reporter' worth his or her salt would have done elementary checks on the dossier immediately, and not touched it with a bargepole -- again, as we used to say in England. Also, even among the incompetent and corrupt, common prudence might have suggested caution.
However, 'fools rush in', as the saying goes, so Isikoff decided to conspire with Deborah Sines, apparently the former U.S. assistant attorney in charge of investigating Seth Rich's murder, to suggest that suggestions that the victim had been the source of the material from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' originated as just another Russian plot.
It appears that prior to the publication of his 'report', Isikoff talked to Butowsky, who in his efforts to dissuade him explained that his involvement in the whole affair began when Ellen Ratner, a news analyst with Fox, and sister of the late Michael Ratner, who had been an attorney for Assange, contacted him in Fall 2016 about a meeting she had with her that figure.
Although Butowsky intended the conversation to be 'off the record', and the idea was emphatically not that Isikoff would contact Ellen Ratner, he did. It seems that -- not particularly surprisingly, in the current climate -- she lied to him, and he was stupid enough to think that this meant he could get away with publishing his story.
And then, not particularly surprisingly, Butowsky and Clevenger abandoned their inhibitions about identifying Ellen Ratner as a source, and filled in a lot of 'blanks' in their 'narrative' about how Seth Rich lived and died.
I am still in the process of digesting the new information. However, a couple of preliminary observations about the implications may be worth making.
Among the many problems for Brennan and his co-conspirators -- among whom, on the British side, Hannigan and Darroch, and also Sedwill, are very important -- one relates to the way that the capabilities of 'scientific forensics', in all kinds of areas, have increased by leaps and bounds in recent years.
This has meant that they have had little option but to corrupt the processes of investigation. The ludicrous claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait, which nobody but a fool -- congenital 'useful idiot' one might say -- or a knave would dare to defend in public, are only one of many cases in point.
What is really dangerous for the conspirators, however, is when the problems they have in contesting rational arguments about the 'scientific forensics' come together with problems relating to more 'old-fashioned' kinds of evidence: crucially, 'witness testimony'.
This, I think, may now be happening.
It also seems to me quite likely that some of those 'in the know' -- including perhaps Rosemary Collyer -- had seen what was liable to happen a good while ago, and decided that a prudent 'rat' keeps its options open.
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Jul 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com
... ... ...
Requiem for 'Interference'
Daniel Lazare's July 12 Consortium News piece shatters one of the twin prongs in Mueller's case that "the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." It was the prong dripping with incessant drivel about the Kremlin using social media to help Trump win in 2016.
Mueller led off his Russiagate report, a redacted version of which was published on April 18, with the dubious claim that his investigation had
" established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents."
Judge to Mueller: Put Up or Shut Up
Mueller: Needs more time. (Flickr)
Regarding the social-media accusation, Judge Friederich has now told Mueller, in effect, to put up or shut up. What happened was this: On February 16, 2018 a typically credulous grand jury -- the usual kind that cynics say can be persuaded to indict the proverbial ham sandwich -- was convinced by Mueller to return 16 indictments of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and associates in St. Petersburg, giving his all-deliberate-speed investigation some momentum and a much-needed, if short-lived, "big win" in "proving" interference by Russia in the 2016 election. It apparently never occurred to Mueller and the super-smart lawyers around him that the Russians would outsmart them by hiring their own lawyers to show up in U.S. court and seek discovery. Oops.
The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization." But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into "Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it" does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions."
More specifically, at the conclusion of a hearing held under seal on May 28, Judge Friedrich ordered the government "to refrain from making or authorizing any public statement that links the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies." The judge ordered further that "any public statement about the allegations in the indictment . . . must make clear that, one, the government is summarizing the allegations in the indictment which remain unproven, and, two, the government does not express an opinion on the defendant's guilt or innocence or the strength of the evidence in this case."
Reporting Thursday on Judge Friedrich's ruling, former CIA and State Department official Larry C. Johnson described it as a "potential game changer," observing that Mueller "has not offered one piece of solid evidence that the defendants were involved in any way with the government of Russia." After including a lot of useful background material, Johnson ends by noting:
"Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth–if you cannot produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers."
IRA Story a 'Stretch'
Last fall, investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissected and debunked The New York Times 's far-fetched claim that 80,000 Facebook posts by the Internet Research Agency helped swing the election to Donald Trump. What the Times story neglected to say is that the relatively paltry 80,000 posts were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over the two-year period in question -- before and after the 2016 election.
Stretch and executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.
In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading "analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump.
Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday."
The chances that Americans saw any of these IRA ads -- let alone were influenced by them -- are infinitismal. Porter and others did the math and found that over the two-year period, the 80,000 Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just 0.0000000024 of total Facebook content in that time. Porter commented that this particular Times contribution to the Russiagate story "should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses of statistics of all time."
And now we know, courtesy of Judge Friederich, that Mueller has never produced proof, beyond his say-so, that the Russian government was responsible for the activities of the IRA -- feckless as they were. That they swung the election is clearly a stretch.
The Other Prong: Hacking the DNC
The second of Mueller's two major accusations of Russian interference, as noted above, charged that "a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents." Sadly for Russiagate aficionados, the evidence behind that charge doesn't hold water either.
CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted.
The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.
The filing was in response to a motion by Stone's lawyers asking for "unredacted reports" from CrowdStrike challenging the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. "The government does not possess the information the defendant seeks," the DOJ filing says.
Small wonder that Mueller had hoped to escape further questioning. If he does testify on July 24, the committee hearings will be well worth watching.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and a presidential briefer. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His colleagues and he have been following closely the ins and outs of Russiagate.
Carlos , July 17, 2019 at 12:52
With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the knees.
cletus , July 17, 2019 at 05:29
just read your article at lewrockwell on 7/17.
you gave all the facts that irrefutably condemn the mueller hoax and reveal what a con man he is. I salute you for this.
unfortutunately, you then come to a conclusion that cannot be supported by an reasonable person.
you think that mueller's con will be called out by the republicans on the committee.
what a joke. They will avoid like the plague revealling that the russia claims by mueller are a hoax.
they'll focus completely on ' you did conclude that trump didn't collude with the russians, right?"anyone who's been paying attention at all knows this.
Robert G. Hilton , July 17, 2019 at 01:13
There was no expert report showing hacking because the expert had found that the Russians did not hack. Simple as that. The way it works is, that an expert puts nothing in writing until AFTER orally consulting with the attorney who hired him. If the news is bad for said attorney, then the expert is instructed NEVER to put the bad news in writing. I used to hire experts when I litigated patent infringement cases, and that is the way it works. If you pay the expert, then you make the rules. The judge may understand this too. I'm pretty sure that the Crowd Strike expert also gave Muller (Andrew Wiseman?) the same news about no hacking.
michael weddle , July 16, 2019 at 22:41
Why, shortly after Random Juan claimed the presidency, was a Crowdstrike employee trying to stoke the Venezuelan coup?
Bailey , July 16, 2019 at 20:27
I wish that this constant debunking of Russia Gate would be doing some good. Sadly it's not. Most of the members of daily kos believe everything about Russia Gate and even after reading some of the great essays written here that debunks it they instead say that this website has been bought out by Russia.
I once thought that if people really looked at the evidence or lack of it that they would wake up and smell the propaganda. It has always been so obvious to me that there was never any there there and I couldn't understand how people bought into it. But I think it has to do with who people voted for in the last election. Hillary's supporters just can't believe that she could have lost without outside interference. Sad.
ex-PFC Chuck , July 16, 2019 at 18:08
A post yesterday at The Conservative Treehouse expands on a Gateway Pundit post about an amended filing to the court in a Texas libel suit that could blow the whole Russia-gate hoax wide open, taking with it whatever shred of credibility the Mueller Report might still have. Not to mention the rationale for silencing Assange, General Flynn's prosecution, and the murder of Seth Rich.
Vera Moldt , July 16, 2019 at 17:13
It looks like this fraudulent fable has finally been debunked by the US judicial system. Now the Hillary bots will have to come up with another excuse for her wealthy donors as to why she lost the election to a much maligned TV host that spent a small fraction of her campaign funding. This also takes some of the fuel out of using the Russiagate fraud for a march to war with Russia that was accompanied by large defense spending increases. Russiagate was the perfect gift to the Clinton campaign apologists and the MIC that needs a causus belli to feed the public war machine. That gift box has now been unraveled to display an empty box. I'm surprised Ray McGovern did not bring up the issue of the alleged hacking of DNC emails to have been contrary to the capability of the internet at that time. The rate of transfer was consistent with downloading to a flash drive but impossible for transfer of packets across an IP network – further debunking the Russia hacking narrative. This whole house of cards has crashed in and it seems that it will be impossible for the Russiagate fraudsters to reconstruct their tawdry myth.
jaycee , July 16, 2019 at 14:08
Perceptive bloggers identified the IRA as a commercial clickbait operation two years ago. Everything about that operation was consistent with that description. Describing the IRA as a Russian government psy-op program, in turn, was inconsistent with the evidence at hand and so required the assumption that its purpose was to "sow chaos", or similar guesswork. It should be remembered that the Facebook / Twitter people were initially reluctant to go along with the latter theory, and only came on board after a great deal of pressure from members of Congress such as Mark Warner. So this whole nonsensical story was magnified at the insistence of powerful Democratic congressional persons, and Mueller was simply bolstering their arguments – which was his job it appears. The result has been not only a false consciousness deliberately seeded through the public, but also a raft of social media and alternative news censorship which has been silencing both alt-right and progressive voices.
Jeff Harrison , July 16, 2019 at 13:45
Thanx, Ray. I've said from the outset that Russiagate was bullshit perpetrated by Three Names who just couldn't stand the fact that this was the latest in a long string of failures that this incompetent, arrogant woman perpetrated on the American people. It was bullshit from jump street because Three Names won the election by 3M votes but in the American presidential election you not only need the votes, you need the distribution. Distribution she didn't have. Russia (or any other actor sufficiently large and determined) can sway votes for one candidate or another but they can't sway distribution. I personally thought the claim that Russia via the Internet Research Agency sought to sway the election by disparaging Three Names and pumping up Thump. Three Names won by 3M votes. Looks like Russia's IRA did a spectacularly poor job of meddling.
There are some take aways from this that the government should be looking into/doing something about.
1. Russiagate never had any legs. The legs that it got came from an effort by the deep state to create them out of thin air. The deep state tried to take on the role of the Praetorian Guard in old Rome. Their role originally was to protect the emperor but it morphed over the years into picking who would be the emperor. The likes of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Struck (however you spell it) and his femme fatale (at a minimum, there may be more) should all be marched off to jail and locked up for a considerable period of time for their attempts to destroy our democracy (or republic – a distinction without a difference).2. Seth Rich's murder needs to be actually investigated now that he has been outed as the source of the leak to Wikileaks.
3. The Republican party needs to be banned as a political party. Any clear eyed view of the 2016 election will conclude that the decades old effort by the Republicans at voter suppression and gerrymandering are what resulted in the 2016 results. 80,000 votes in three states that the Republicans have invested great voter suppression efforts – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania would have changed the election results. This should have been a major neon sign that winner take all for electoral votes is a bad idea. If proportional EC votes were mandated, third parties would have a chance and our presidential elections might become actual contests. Otherwise, we'll continue to have elections that are between two candidates – worse and worser.
John Puma , July 16, 2019 at 12:36
The proportion of IRA "stories" among total Facebook postings
in the period in question, can be expressed in manner a bit more
readily grasped: on average, one IRA posting appeared among
every 412 million total. For perspective the US population is now
about 330 million.The FBIs bungling with Crowdstrike information is reminiscent
of its reported 9-11 careless incompetence.Jill , July 16, 2019 at 13:06
This may be why NPR featured that story:
"Businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit on Monday that outed FOX News reporter Ellen Ratner was his source for the Seth Rich information.
This comes after Michael Isikoff's report last week that labeled Butowsky as a Russian source."
Chet Roman , July 16, 2019 at 13:12
Yahoo's reporter Michael Isikoff is a sock puppet for the CIA/FBI that provided the info to NPR and was one of the first to spread the lies told to him by Steele about Russian interference. He must have tried to head off the lawsuit filed today. Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit against the liberal media claiming defamation and business disparagement. He claims that Assange told Ellen Ratner (Fox News analyst and sister of Assange's lawyer who passed away) that Seth and Aaron Rich provided the emails to Wikileaks.
Kieron , July 16, 2019 at 17:22
I don't think anyone with a couple of brain cells would dismiss the idea that an insider with the DNC having access to delicate, perhaps damaging material, being what seems on the surface, to be the victim of a motiveless murder would ask the question, was there any connection between Seth Rich's demise and the crap storm that ensued after the Wikileaks release. Really hello !
LarcoMarco , July 16, 2019 at 17:46
"NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Michael Isikoff" – what a predictable farce! "We talked to Deborah Sines, who was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation into Seth Rich's death. She was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney's office in the District of Columbia, which prosecutes local murders. And she would see these conspiracy theories about her case circulating on the Web. She was – she wanted to find out where they were coming from."
At least we now know that Seth Rich's death is/was a Federal case. No more claiming the DCPD has jurisdiction. But no disclosures of the contents of Seth Rich's cell phone and laptop.
Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 10:38
The author seems consumed by this carnival of politicized legalized covert intelligence operations, by people and entities trying to retain money and power.
What's important is that the system hasn't been working for decades, and there's going to be increasingly serious problems, maybe fatal ones, rising if a big overhaul doesn't occur.
Al Pinto , July 16, 2019 at 09:43
The DNC and MSM sold, and sold well, the Russiagate to the general public. Does it really matter, if the "Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come apart at the seams"? Neither the DNC, nor the MSM will report/mention either of the court case, pretty much a blackout for the general public.
Even, if these court cases are widely reported, do you really believe that the majority of the people would change their mind? After almost three years, there's no way that these people will change their mind. The only change that widely reporting these court cases would result in is, that Trump and HRC supporters would hate each other even more.
This Russiagate will be with us pretty much forever, it'll morph in to accusing people of being Russian agents and/or Russian Bots. We already see this taking place and just wait, until next year. It's not going to be pretty
michael , July 16, 2019 at 12:40
Aaron Mate has done a brilliant job researching and debunking Russiagate. Unfortunately for him, he is now ostracized and has to survive on the margins, with other people with critical thinking skills.
Blessthebeasts , July 16, 2019 at 13:28
You're right. The truth doesn't matter, just the BS narrative that has been shoved down our throats for the last few years. It never made any sense to anyone who really thought about it but the media whores just keep spewing total nonsense and they surely won't change their ways now. The fact that the entire crock is really irrelevant to the majority of our citizens doesn't matter to them a bit.
AnneR , July 16, 2019 at 09:42
Thank you again Mr McGovern for another article on this never ending saga. While I hope that sanity begins to dawn among the so-called progressives, I have serious doubts.
1. Neither the BBC World Service nor NPR have mentioned (at least while I've been listening) Judge Friedrich's ruling vis a vis provide the evidence (discovery) to the IRA 12's lawyers or tear up the indictment (essentially). Indeed, I've not heard, on the MSM, anything about those 12 IRA folks employing a lawyer and challenging Mueller's indictment. Silence works as well as obfuscation, lies.
2. The Demrats simply will not let their Russophobia go. I gather (from RT – tut tut I must be an RU bottle) that Ms Harris AIPAC schmoozer, keen and eager lock 'em up and throw away the key, corporate-capitalist crony Kamala has been accusing the Russians of stirring up the controversy surrounding Kaepernick's bending of the knee. The Russians and their bots did it.
3. And then this morning on NPR – a Steve Inskip interview with Michael Isikoff focusing on the Seth Rich "conspiracy theory" and of course the whole thing (or that segment which I could stomach hearing) presumed as a matter of established, and thus true, fact that everything that went wrong for the DNC's HRC campaign was caused by the Russians – for which read Putin. Isikoff was there as an "investigative" journalist for "Yahoo News" – and his "investigation" had shown that the Russians were – who else – behind the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was killed by HRC thugs in order to keep him permanently quiet about corruption in the DNC. (Corruption – a rather mealy-mouthed way of avoiding bringing into NPR daylight what the DNC were actually doing: determining who would be the Dem candidate willy nilly of who the voters wanted. But this mealy-mouthedness is fully in keeping with NPR's basic silence on what Wikileaks revealed via that insider download.)
Orwellian. Propaganda at its Bernays, Goebbels best. Despair . This business is *not* going away. The Demrats – both in DC and their bourgeois/progressive supporters have far too much invested in the whole confabulation for them to admit that the former deliberately lied and the latter were willing? hoodwinked.
Ray McGovern , July 16, 2019 at 14:57
Dear AnneR,
Thanks for your comment. I would like it if somehow "despair," could be disallowed.
There are enough of us, after all. And, as Annie Dillard put it, "There never was anybody but us."
I also take some inspiration from the dismal-sounding, yet somehow uplifting words of I. F. Stone:
"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins."
THE CHALLENGE IS TO ACCEPT THAT, AND FIND JOY IN TRYING -- AND EVEN IN LOSING.
I believe the losing does not last forever; think we all need to do our part in the "interim."
Best regards,
Ray
DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 19:44
That sums things up precisely, Ray.
None of us may live to see a complete turn-around, yet it is the honest effort to encourage and build the foundation for that fundamental systemic change to conscious and principled human awareness which is the measure we must make of ourselves.
Your sense of moral presence, Ray, is very much appreciated.
It serves as inspiration for all, and especially the young, who already understand, and encourages, as example, those who are coming to understand.
DW
AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 08:33
Dear Mr McGovern – thank you for reading and replying to my comment.
And, yes, I do understand the objection to despair – though not, might I add, any thought that its frank expression be expunged!
Were it only the whole Russiagate fabrication, delusions, time and money waste (oh well, only taxpayers' money) and fallout that was so dreadfully wrong, being heinously enacted. Indeed were it all that our taxes were being wasted on.
Perhaps that's it – Russiagate while distracting from the things that the DNC and HRC did, said, *also* makes for good deflection from the war crimes we are committing, the never ending imperialist warmongering we are engaged in, from the fact that many Demrats voted for those nice tax breaks given to the wealthiest tiers in our society, that many of those Demrats voted to hand over to the MIC *even more* loot even as the Pentagon can't account for the billions, or whatever fantastikal amount, it has already received over the years, deflection from the fact that despite such a "good" economy increasing numbers of people are living ever more economically precarious lives, rents rise astronomically, healthcare is a joke (or would be were its lack not so serious for so many). And that's not to mention the realities of climate change or the continuing (and MSM ignored) 70 plus year plight of Palestinians, among so many others.
My late husband used to tell me to write to NPR, the BBC, to let them know that they weren't codding everyone with their disinformation, non-information, lack of objectivity – their propaganda. And I did, often and used to ask for a response. Did I even get those? You must be joking
AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 14:08
In case someone might think that I expected either the BBC or NPR to alter their ways because of my "letters" (interestingly the BBC only allows/ed for around 1000 characters or something equally useless) – no. But when (in the case of the BBC) you can tick the "please reply" box and get total silence, not even a "thank you for your blah blah we shan't pay any attention to your complaints ," in response it is pretty frustrating.
As for NPR – I stopped our contributions. Why would we *pay* for the privilege of being propagandized? I just wish we had stopped them years earlier
Anyway, thank you Mr McGovern for your continuing coverage of this whole affair. I just wish my late partner in life and love had known of this website.
ML , July 16, 2019 at 09:24
Each morning when I arise, I get my coffee and settle down to read Consortium News. I also make a habit of a quick perusal of what the stenographers are jawing about on CNN today, there is a real doozy smearing Assange. The spinners are working overtime to patch over all the holes in their hoax story. I couldn't get through the whole thing because it's another smear piece and a long one including the old saw that Assange smeared feces on the Ecuadorian embassy's walls. I had to stop reading. Gosh, I can't abide those people. Thanks Ray, for telling the truth. We are drowning in $h** out there in la-la land. CN offers a much-needed dose of reality medicine. Thank you kindly, all.
Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 10:19
Here's a good essay by Caitlin Johnstone regarding the Assange hit-piece.
Marko , July 16, 2019 at 07:31
Even worse news for the Russiahoaxers is the recent revelation , documented in a lawsuit , that Ellen Ratner , sister of deceased Wikileaks' lawyer Michael Ratner, met with Assange in the fall of 2016 and was told by him that Aaron and Seth Rich provided the DNC leaks to Wikileaks. Ed Butowsky was made aware of this , with instructions by Ms. Ratner for him to relay the information to the Rich family. When he did so , in December 2016 , he was told by Joel Rich , Seth's father , that he was already aware of his sons' involvement.
This is no longer conspiracy talk , folks. Ed Butowsky is not dumb enough to make these claims on court documents without knowing he can back them up. Shit is about to get real for Mueller and the DNC.
"BREAKING: Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information" @ Gateway Pundit
Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 08:43
Wow! Thanks Marko. Here's the link.
DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 09:37
Well, Skip Scott, either this revelation will put "paid" to the "Russia-did-it!" charade, or else the Voracious Memory Hole will act like a giant black hole and the event horizon will be swallowed into total nothingness as a new Middle-Eastern Adventure captures the hearts and minds of the happy warriors and consumers of U$ Imperialism.
Whatever happens, it will be wholey interesting times ahead.
DW
jmg , July 16, 2019 at 10:01
There was a related, extensive 2018 interview about Butowsky's private investigation into the Seth Rich case to help the family, what they found, and what happened (the DNC assigned someone to represent the family, etc.; the mentioned lawsuits were later dropped/dismissed). It included, without naming Ratner, the unverified mention: "his friend came back from London with information that he said he wanted to get to the Rich family." Since this alleged private message appears to be not only doubtful, but of course also not confirmed by WikiLeaks, we can't really know if it happened or not.
Ed Butowsky Sits Down With Gateway Pundit for First Interview After Being Sued by Family in Seth Rich Murder Mystery -- March 19, 2018
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/03/ed-butowsky-sits-first-interview-gateway-pundit-sued-family-seth-rich-murder-mystery/Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 11:17
I wonder why Seth's murder hasn't been solved?
I wonder why there's almost no media attention paid?O Society , July 16, 2019 at 17:32
Marko, polo! Here it is:
Seth Rich, disgruntled DNC worker, blows the whistle on HillBillary Clinton rigging the Democratic presidential primary against Bernie Sanders, so he gives data supporting his discovery of rigging to Wikileaks. Rich got the data on a thumdrive downloaded at DNC HQ itself.
No Russians, no hacking, just a whistleblower on the fraud ironically called US "democracy." We've all seen the data Rich leaked. Emails detailing HillBillary Clinton's graft and fraud and collusion against Sanders.
No wonder no other candidates besides Sanders ran against HillBillary, for they all knew the fix was in from its inception!
I dunno who killed Seth Rich, but I do know the Democratic party stole the election from Bernie, then projected its own crimes onto Russia, same way a kid projects his own crime of breaking a cookie jar on his brother when he tells Momma "He dit it –> He ate the cookies and broke the jar!" Meanwhile, there's chocolate smeared all over the DNC's face.
We have evidence for this, the leaked emails themselves tell the story
Gregory Herr , July 16, 2019 at 18:15
Seth Rich copied and leaked the DNC e-mails and was murdered for it. For this to become irrefutable common knowledge will be quite one godsend of a reality check. Maddow might not be able to get out of bed for weeks.
Repeat after me Rachel there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack
jmg , July 16, 2019 at 07:13
From the Brennan–Comey–Rogers assessment/opinion (January 6, 2017):
"We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. . . .
"- High confidence generally indicates that judgments are based on high-quality information from multiple sources. High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.
"- Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence."
Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf-- -- –
"When they say they have 'high confidence', that means they don't have any evidence!"
-- Bill Binney, former NSA Technical DirectorDW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 07:10
Thank you, Ray McGovern for this splendid article laying out the facts which make clear the absurdities of these last several years. One hopes, now that the "Russia-did-it" canard is fully exposed, by US courts, that the truth may finally get through, over or around, the media wall of enforced ignorance and Mueller hero-worship, and reach the ears and eyes of the people.
Should that actually happen, it might even be possible that other truth, long subject to media manipulation and distortion, the cases of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning come readily to mind, could be seen in the honest light of day after an almost eight year protracted nightmare of media driven deceit, psychological torture, and deliberately vicious character assassination is revealed, in Assange's case, as it might well be, by Nils Melzer's report to the UN.
The legacy U$ corporate media have much to answer for, from promulgating lies that led to war, to missile attacks, and to brutal economic sanctions, a form of economic warfare, to efforts to start a new Cold War, and to aggrandize intelligence agencies which have sought to pervert justice and to illegally influence the political process by falsely accusing, on the flimsy words of partisan political operatives, another nation of the very actions those agencies have used, repeatedly and for many decades,to destroy the political processes of other nations, including the very nation singled out to take the blame for Hillary Clinton's abysmal and pathetic failure in the 2016 election.
What a waste of time, resources, trust, and energy it has bee, these last years, yet it was all so very profitable and lucrative for the media, even if it were "not good" for the country.
The media have damned and convicted themselves.
The U$ intelligence agencies have exposed themselves as corrupt, completely dishonest, vindictive, petty, and thoroughly untrustworthy.
It remains to be seen if the people have learned anything, and whether they will do anything with this costly, yet necessary, education.
DW
Allan , July 16, 2019 at 07:04
Will Adam Schiff spend the week with Bob Mueller to get their story straight
UserFriendly , July 16, 2019 at 05:18
?Unfortunately this is partially bunk. The first bit the judge didn't rule that there was no evidence, she ruled that Mueller publicly saying that the IRA = kremlin and they did try to help Trump win was prejudicial in the case against the IRA (quite obviously so). But him not being able to say that during his testimony should go over well with the democrats. Of course if he actually wanted to explain all he would have to do is drop the case against the IRA because it's never going to trial anyways. Almost makes you wonder if he filed those charges expressly so he wouldn't have to connect the imaginary dotts.
Aiya , July 16, 2019 at 11:03
What they called "trying to help Trump" was a miniscule amount of social media posts, 56% of which were made AFTER the election. And Facebook had to look 3 times to come up with ANYTHING–what they finally reported were posts coming from Russia or eastern Europe, posts in Cyrillic language, and posts from people with Russian/European names.
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Jul 07, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
Reasons to Suspect that Seth Rich Participated in the Leaking of the DNC Emails to Wikileaks
veganmark on Fri, 07/05/2019 - 10:38pm
Anja Geitz on Sat, 07/06/2019 - 11:41amThe evidence that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC to provide the DNC emails which Wikileaks published is wholly unconvincing. In particular, the Guccifer 2.0 persona identified by the ICA and the Mueller report as the hacker, is clearly no Russian, and Mueller's tale of how he allegedly transferred the emails to Wikileaks is overtly absurd.
Julian Assange has strongly hinted that Seth Rich could be the leaker, and offered a reward for info leading to the apprehension of his killer. He further asserts, quite definitively, that Russian government hackers were not the source.
Wikileaks has repeatedly retweeted essays implying that Seth was the leaker.
Craig Murray, Julian's close associate, assures us that the Wikileaks DNC and Podesta releases were the result of leaks by individuals with legal access to the material, not hacks.
Sy Hersh stated that he has a trusted source inside the FBI who told him that he had seen a secret FBI report regarding an analysis of Seth's laptop, on which they found evidence that Seth had offered samples of DNC emails to WIkileaks and offered a much larger batch in return for payment; and that Seth subsequently had provided the DNC emails to Wikileaks via a drop box.
Larry Johnson, former CIA agent, claims that he has two inside sources that confirm this.
Kim Dotcom claims that Seth was the leaker, and that he assisted him in this effort.
Ed Bukowsky claims that a source close to Julian told him confidentially that Seth and Aaron Rich were the sources of the released DNC emails, and asked him to contact Seth's parents about this. Bukowsky claims that, when he informed Seth's father about this, he said "I already know that". It was only after the DNC "helpfully" provided the Rich family with "crisis consultant" Brad Bauman that the Rich family publicly denounced any suspicion that Seth had been the leaker. Reportedly, the Riches have become persuaded that the Wikileaks releases were responsible for the election of Trump, and they don't want to admit that Seth could have had anything to do with that.
Seth Rich was murdered, for no clear reason – no valuable belongings taken - several weeks after the DNC emails were exfiltrated from the DNC. The creator of the Guccifer 2.0 hoax would have had strong motivation to eliminate (or otherwise silence) the actual leaker, to prevent his hoax from being unmasked. Unmasking the hoax could have had a devastating impact on Hillary's campaign.
As to the source of the Podesta emails published by Wikileaks, Craig Murray assures us that the well known spearphishing of Podesta's computer is a red herring. Rather, he states that Podesta was being monitored by the NSA owing to his business ties to Ukraine.
Someone in the NSA who had access to these emails - presumably someone upset with Hillary's campaign - leaked them to Wikileaks. Murray states that he had a meeting in Washington DC in September 2016 with someone involved in this leak - hence he may have privileged insight on this issue.
This...Mueller's tale of how he allegedly transferred the emails to Wikileaks is overtly absurd
was explained in the report by saying that someone from Trump's campaign gave Julian the information when they went to London. Did Robert get that information from the guardian article written by Luke Harding? If so, lol! Wikileaks debunked this article the minute it came out and no one from the Ecuadorian embassy or from London's many CCTV cameras showed any video evidence of it happening.
There are so many holes in this whole Russia Gate saga that I'm surprised anyone is believing it. Guess you cross posted this on ToP right?
If that is indeed the reason Seth Rich's parentsTheOtherMaven on Sat, 07/06/2019 - 11:44amHave denied Seth's involvement with WikiLeaks, its a shame they lack the courage and moral conviction their son had.
Lost one son, don't want to lose the other?A reminder from an old-time Illuminati game player: "Government" and "Criminal" are not opposites. They are sometimes co-attributes.
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Jun 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Daniel Lazare via ConsortiumNews.com,
The idea that the DNC email disclosures were produced by a hack - not a leak - makes less and less sense...
After bungling every last aspect of Russia-gate since the day the pseudo-scandal broke, the corporate press is now seizing on the Mueller report to shut down debate on one of the key questions still outstanding from the 2016 presidential election: the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.
No one knows who killed Rich in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016. All we know is that he was found at 4:19 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood "with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back" according to the police report . Conscious and still breathing, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:57.
[ Image deleted ]
Slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. (LinkedIn)Police have added to the confusion by releasing information only in the tiniest dribs and drabs. Rich's mother, Mary, told local TV news that her son struggled with his assailants: "His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything . They took his life for literally no reason. They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life."
But cops said shortly after the killing that they had no immediate indication that robbery was a motive. Despite his mother's report of two shots in the back, all the local medical examiner would say is that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the torso. According to Rich's brother, Aaron , Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying on the pavement. Yet cops have refused to say if he described his assailant. A month later, they put out a statement that "there is no indication that Seth Rich's death is connected to his employment at the DNC," but refused to elaborate.
The result is a scattering of disconnected facts that can be used to support just about any theory from a random killing to a political assassination. Nonetheless, Robert Mueller is dead certain that the murder had nothing to do with the emails -- just as he was dead certain in 2003 that Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction " pos[ing] a clear threat to our national security .
Scene of the crime. (YouTube)
Mueller's Theory About Assange 'Dissembling'Mueller is equally positive that, merely by expressing concern that the murder may have had something to do with the release of thousands of DNC emails less than two weeks later, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was trying to protect the real source, which of course is Russia.
Here's how the Mueller report puts it:
"Beginning in the summer of 2016, Assange and WikiLeaks made a number of statements about Seth Rich, a former DNC staff member who was killed in July 2016. The statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails. On August 9, 2016, the @WikiLeaks Twitter accounted posted: 'ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.'
Likewise, on August 25, 2016, Assange was asked in an interview, 'Why are you so interested in Seth Rich's killer?' and responded, 'We're very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged WikiLeaks sources.' The interviewer responded to Assange's statement by commenting, 'I know you don't want to reveal your source, but it certainly sounds like you're suggesting a man who leaked information to WikiLeaks was then murdered.'
Assange replied, 'If there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication, and that person has been murdered in suspicious, circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that the two are connected. But it is a very serious matter that type of allegation is very serious, as it's taken very seriously by us'" (vol. 1, pp. 48-49).
Mueller: Says Assange's real source was Russia. (All Your Breaking News Here via Flickr)
This is what the Mueller report calls "dissembling." The conclusion caused jubilation in corporate newsrooms where hostility to both Russia and WikiLeaks runs high. "The Seth Rich conspiracy theory needs to end now," declared Vox.com. "The special counsel's report confirmed this week that Seth Rich was not the source," said The New York Times . "The Mueller report might not end the debate over what President Donald Trump did," the Poynter Institute's Politifact added ,"but it has scuttled one conspiracy theory involving a murdered Democratic party staffer and WikiLeaks."
One Conspiracy Theory for AnotherBut all the Mueller report did was replace one conspiracy theory with another involving the Kremlin and its minions that is equally unconvincing.
Remarkably, there's nothing in the Mueller report indicating that the special counselor independently reviewed the forensic evidence or questioned family members and friends.
He certainly didn't interview Assange, the person in the best position to know who supplied the data, even though Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman, says the WikiLeaks founder would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, "which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by written communication."
Bike rack and plaque outside DNC headquarters. (Johanna745, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons)
Murray says Mueller's team made no effort to contact him either even though he has publicly stated that he met clandestinely with an associate of the leaker near the American University campus in Washington.
Why not? Because Mueller didn't want anything that might disturb his a priori assumption that Russia is the guilty party. If he had bucked the intelligence community finding – set forth in a formal assessment in January 2017 – that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at undermining Hillary Clinton's candidacy -- it would have been front-page news since an anti-Trump press had already accepted the assessment as gospel. ButMueller is far too much of an establishmentarian to do anything so reckless.
So he selected evidence in support of the official theory that "[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion," as the report states on its very first page. And since Assange had consistently maintained that the data was the result of an inside leak rather than internal hack and that "[o]ur source is not the Russian government," he cherry picked evidence to show that Assange is a liar, not only about Russia but about Seth Rich.
Cryptic ExchangeIt's a self-serving myth that corporate media have swallowed whole because it serves their interests too. One problem in exposing it, however, is Assange's pledge – intrinsic to the WikiLeaks mission – to safeguard the identities of whistleblowers who furnish it with information. The upshot has been a good deal of beating around the bush. A month after the murder, the WikiLeaks founder appeared on a Dutch program called "Nieuwsuur" and took part in a cryptic exchange with journalist Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal:
Assange during exchange with Rosenthal. (YouTube)
Assange: Whistle blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. There's a 27-year-old – works for the DNC – who was shot in the back, murdered, just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington, so .
Rosenthal: That was just a robbery, I believe, wasn't it?
Assange: No, there's no finding, so –
Rosenthal: What are you suggesting?
Assange: I'm suggesting that our sources take risks, and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.
Rosenthal: But was he one of your sources then? I mean –
Assange: We don't comment about who our sources are.
Rosenthal: But why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?
Assange: Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources, you know, face serious risks. That's why they come to us – so we can protect their anonymity.
Rosenthal: But it's quite something to suggest a murder. That's basically what you're doing.
This was as close as Assange could come to confirming that Rich was tied up with the leak without actually saying it. Hours later, WikiLeaks tweeted about the $20k reward.
Four months after that, Craig Murray told the Libertarian Institute's Scott Horton: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he [Rich] was the source of the leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believe[s] that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks." (Quote begins at 11:20 .)
Thanks to such foggy rhetoric, it was all but inevitable that conspiracy theories would ignite. Two months after the killing, an ultra-conservative talk-radio host named Jack Burkman – best known for organizing a protest campaign against the Dallas Cowboys' hiring of an openly gay football player named Michael Sam – approached members of the Rich family and offered to launch an investigation in their behalf.
The family said yes, but then backed off when Burkman grandly announced that the murder was a Kremlin hit. Things turned even more bizarre a year later when Kevin Doherty, an ex-Marine whom Burkman had hired to look into the case, lured his ex-boss to a Marriott hotel in Arlington, Virgina, where he shot him twice in the buttocks and then tried to run him down with a rented SUV. Doherty received a nine-year sentence last December.
The rightwing Washington Times meanwhile reported that WikiLeaks had paid Seth and Aaron Rich an undisclosed sum, a story it was forced to retract , and Fox News named Seth as the source as well. (A sympathetic judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Rich family on technical grounds.) But still the speculation bubbled on, with conservative nuts blaming everyone from ex-DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to acting DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and Bill and Hillary themselves.
All of which plays into the hands of a corporate press happy to write off any and all suspicion as a product of alt-right paranoia.
But if speculation refuses to die, it's for a simple reason. If the DNC email disclosure was a hack, then Rich clearly had nothing to do with it, which means his death was no more than a robbery gone awry. But if it was a leak, then – based on broad hints dropped by Assange and Murray – it looks like the story could well be more complicated. This proves nothing in and of itself. But it guarantees that questions will grow as long as the Washington police make zero progress in its investigation and the Mueller report continues to fall apart.
And that's just what's happening. Mueller's account of how Russian intelligence supposedly supplied WikiLeaks with stolen data makes no sense because, according to the report's chronology, the transfer left WikiLeaks with just four days to review some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents to make sure that they were genuine and unaltered – a clear impossibility. (See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.)
The FBI assessment that Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik "has ties to Russian intelligence" – which Mueller cites (vol. 1, p. 133) in order to justify holding Manafort in solitary confinement during the Russia-gate investigation – is similarly disintegrating amid reports that Kilimnik actually served as an important State Department intelligence source.
So the idea of a hack makes less and less sense and an inside leak seems more and more plausible, which is why questions about the Rich case will not go away.
Bottom line: you don't have to be a loony rightist to suspect that there is more to the murder than Robert Mueller would like us to believe.
Reaper , 6 minutes ago link
CanadaGoose , 8 minutes ago link"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Arthur Conan Doyle
The FBI/Mueller/Comey are the Federal Key Stone Cops.
Mueller was brought in as the Cleaner! It is a massive cover-up for which most of those who are complicit should be behind bars!
Kotzbomber747 , 15 minutes ago link
DaBard51 , 20 minutes ago linkQuestion: why is the Trump Administration still actively PERSECUTING Julian Assange?
"...Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman, says the WikiLeaks founder would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, "which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by written communication."
No need for arrests, extradition requests, or 17 espionage charges. A simple email phone call might just do the trick... It shows once again that Trump is a similar fascist as Hillary and the DNC!
mpcascio , 23 minutes ago linkMueller: "The [Wikileaks] statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails."
For this assertion, what evidence did Mueller find?
<crickets>
When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.
847328_3527 , 16 minutes ago linkI'm sure the Kenyan was deep in the mix.
gay troll , 23 minutes ago linkThe best thing a person can do if anything happens to them is try to document it and send it to a friendly media outlet since the police and FBI may cover it up. Perhaps dump it directly on to the internet so at least some folks hear/see the truth before it all vanishes.
chunga , 22 minutes ago linkWhy would an assassin leave him alive on the sidewalk?
fackbankz , 19 minutes ago linkWhy didn't the red team make him do it, or do it themselves?
Today we've learned that the FBI didn't, inexplicably, go and grab the DNC server but also never even saw the report from Crowdstrike that was used as the basis for blaming everything on Russia.
fackbankz , 20 minutes ago linkMueller is a lifelong dirty cop and cover up artist. That's why.
neidermeyer , 14 minutes ago linkThe killers are most likely dead themselves.
SummerSausage , 23 minutes ago linkGuatemalans or MS-13 subcontractors to the CIA who would have been killed after the job.
curbjob , 32 minutes ago linkOf course, the FBI admitted that it never examined the DNC servers and just revealed in court that it never saw a detailed report from Crowdstrike showing that Russians hacked the server. That's why Mueller never investigated. He knew it was a lie but one the entire 3 years, Obama admin, Hillary, the DNC & corrupt cabal depend on maintaining.
SummerSausage , 29 minutes ago linkThe author quotes Seth Rich's brother to support his theory.
According to Rich's brother, Aaron , Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying on the pavement.
... but then fails to quote his brothers press statement ?
Which is:
The special counsel has now provided hard facts that demonstrate this conspiracy is false. I hope that the people who pushed, fueled, spread, ran headlines, articles, interviews, talk and opinion shows, or in any way used my family's tragedy to advance their political agendas -- despite our pleas that what they were saying was not based on any facts -- will take responsibility for the unimaginable pain they have caused us. We will continue to pursue justice for Seth's murderers, as well as those who used his murder to advance their personal or political agendas by advancing false conspiracy theories
Aaron Rich
curbjob , 20 minutes ago linkIf you followed the story, the Rich family was very much doubted this was a random robbery until political operators had a long chat with them. Their stories changed and cooperation with the independent investigation ended. This neighborhood has cameras everywhere. Suddenly, none of them worked.
MadelynMarie , 20 minutes ago linkSo you're saying the family was coerced into changing their story?
pelican , 24 minutes ago linkyes, I thought the family spokesperson was from the DNC
RiverDrifter , 4 minutes ago linkWhere was SA Peter Strzok when he was murdered? Just wondering
navy62802 , 28 minutes ago linkFeel like I'm reading a question from the future.....
SummerSausage , 22 minutes ago linkNot only did the FBI never get the DNC server for forensic investigation, it turns out the FBI never even got a finalized report on "DNC hacking" from Crowdstrike. Every conclusion drawn by the various agencies within the Intelligence Community is based on a redacted copy of a draft report from Crowdstrike, and this report was never finalized from its draft form. And even the draft was never unredacted for the FBI.
The whole thing was a sham from the start, as many people suspected. The Mueller operation was never seeking to uncover truth; it was an impeachment investigation by any other name. Why Mueller didn't carry it over the goal line will forever remain a mystery to me.
Consuelo , 25 minutes ago linkYet that did not stop Mueller from a pre-dawn raid of Stone's house with 27 armed officers & CNN claiming he helped Wikileaks get the DNC emails from Russian hackers. It isn't stopping the corrupt cabal from prosecuting Stone & Assange for that continued lie.
DudleyjouWrite , 26 minutes ago link'Why Didn't Mueller Investigate Seth Rich?' Occam's razor. Why would a paid lackey disobey direct orders by the chief architects of this Criminal Conspiracy and risk his own life in the process? It makes no sense on any level.
Freddie , 26 minutes ago linkThe many 'Mueller' questions: Whitey Bulger, Cause of death: Blunt force trauma
joego1 , 29 minutes ago linkFunny how we hear about all the great whistle blower-leakers in Wastergate and the wonder cub reporters aka CI$$A shills like Woodward, Bernstein and Ben Bradley who were and are CI$$A puppets. Watergate was Deepstate Rockefellers/Rothschilds taking Nixon out for tariffs and ending the gravy train Vietnam war with endless opium and heroin.
But when you have Seth Rich murdered and Wiki Leaks saying he is the guy then "democracy dies in the darkness" with the fake *** USA news media aka Operation Mockingbird Wa Post, NY Times, AP and the rest.
chunga , 16 minutes ago linkThe FBI never saw the forensic report on DNC computer. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/06/15/doj-admits-fbi-never-saw-crowdstrike-report-on-dnc-russian-hacking-claim/ They really really didn't want to know the truth.
MartinG , 26 minutes ago linkThe significance of that can't be overstated. The investigations that have been going on NON-STOP for three years are all fake and *everybody* in DC knows it.
page 48 of the mueller report does mention seth rich as the source of the hack. As quoted by Julian Assange and Mueller casually mentioned that it's untrue with no further investigation.
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May 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Forget July 31, 2016 as the alleged start date for the full blown Trump counter intelligence investigation. That day is a sham. The actual campaign to paint Trump as a full fledged stooge of Russia started in early May 2016. We now know the start date thanks to the text messages between star-crossed lovers Strzok and Page and the timeline buried in the Mueller Report:
It is important to understand that the collection of intelligence on U.S. Presidential candidates was not limited to Donald Trump. The collection effort started in the summer of 2015 and included the main Republican candidates and, according to a knowledgeable source, also targeted Bernie Sanders.
Also remember that the Presidential campaign is a dynamic event that changes over time. In the summer of 2015, the conventional wisdom touted Jeb Bush as the likely nominee. But as the months passed the field narrowed. By March of 2016, Donald Trump was the leader and appeared likely to garner the nomination.
April was the turning point where the foundation for attacking Trump was being laid. The law firm, Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign . Andy McMarthy reported on the details of this arrangement in October 2017:
The Clinton campaign and the DNC retained the law firm of Perkins Coie; in turn, one of its partners, Marc E. Elias, retained Fusion GPS. We don't know how much Fusion GPS was paid, but the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid $9.1 million to Perkins Coie during the 2016 campaign (i.e., between mid-2015 and late 2016).
Fusion GPS then "hired" FBI Informant Christopher Steele in May 2016. More about that later.
As Lisa Page and Peter Strzok noted in their text exchange, Ted Cruz dropping out of the race in early May was the catalyst for focusing all resources on Donald Trump. This effort, which I label, the Trump Russia covert action, involved the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and British Intelligence. How do we know? Just look at the Robert Mueller Report:
- May 4, 2016, George Papadopolous forwarded to Corey Lewandowski an email from Timofeev [who was introduced to Papadopolous by Joseph Mifsud] raising the possibility of a meeting in Moscow , asking Lewandowski whether that was " something we want to move forward with. " The next day, Papadopoulos forwarded the same Timofeev email to Sam Clovis, adding to the top of the email "Russia update." (From Mueller Report)
- May 4, 2016, FBI Informant Felix Sater followed up with Michael Cohen re Trump Tower Moscow Project: "I had a chat with Moscow. ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention. I said I believe, but don't know for sure, that 's it's probably after the convention. Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime you want but the 2 big guys where [sic] the question. I said I would confirm and revert. . . . Let me know about If I was right by saying I believe after Cleveland and also when you want to speak to them and possibly fly over." (From Mueller Report)
- May 5, 2016, FBI Informant Felix Sater wrote to Michael Cohen: "Peskov would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia's Davos it's June 16-19. He wants to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either Putin or Medvedev , as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there. This is perfect. The entire business class of Russia wiU be there as well. He said anything you want to discuss including dates and subjects are on the table to discuss[. ]" (From Mueller Report)
- May 6, 2016, George Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government [i.e., Erika Thompson, senior aide to Alexander Downer] that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to candidate Clinton. (p. 81 Mueller Report)
- May 6, 2016, two military attachés at the US embassy in London, Terrence Dudley and Gregory Baker, reach out to George Papadopolous to set up a meeting." [Both, per Papadopolous are with Defense Intelligence Agency, { https://books.apple.com/us/book/deep-state-target/id1446495998 ) (From Papadopolous Book)
- May 7, 2016 (12 days before becoming campaign chair for Trump's) Paul Manafort meets with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who has lived in both Russia and Ukraine and was a longtime Manafort employee. (From Mueller Report) [NOTE -- Mueller's team identified this as "suspect" activity that needed to be investigated.]
- May 16, 2016, while that request was still under consideration, Carter Page emailed Clovis, J.D. Gordon, and Walid Phares and suggested that candidate Trump take his place speaking at the commencement ceremony in Moscow. (From Mueller Report)
- May 19, 2016, Paul Manafort was promoted to campaign chairman and chief strategist, and Gates, who had been assisting Manafort on the Campaign, was appointed deputy campaign chairman. (From Mueller Report) [NOTE -- the Mueller team believed that Manafort was acting on behalf of Russian interests but failed to find corroborating evidence.]
- May 2016, the IRA created the Twitter account @march_for_trump , which promoted IRA-organized rallies in support of the Trump Campaign (From Mueller Report
- May 2016-- FBI Informant Henry Oknyansky (who also went by the name Henry Greenberg), claimed to have information pertaining to Hillary Clinton. Michael Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky. Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting. (From Mueller Report)
Then we have this little tidbit courtesy of the Washington Post that the CIA acted, perhaps as early as June 2016 :
John Brennan convened a secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.
The unit functioned as a sealed compartment, its work hidden from the rest of the intelligence community. Those brought in signed new non-disclosure agreements to be granted access to intelligence from all three participating agencies.
They worked exclusively for two groups of "customers," officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.
Investigators must get the date that this CIA task force was established. They also need to identify and interview the people who participated and were cleared to work on this task force. President Trump must understand that this was not a legitimate intelligence operation. It was weaponizing the intel community to act against a Presidential candidate. It was manufactured as part of a broader plan to paint Trump as a tool of Putin and a servant of Russia.
We must take a new look at the story told about the so-called Russian hack of the DNC. I believe that Crowd Strike is lying about its role and the timeline. Here is the "official" story
May 6, 2016, Dmitri Alperovitch woke up in a Los Angeles hotel to an alarming email. Alperovitch is the thirty-six-year-old cofounder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, and late the previous night, his company had been asked by the Democratic National Committee to investigate a possible breach of its network. A CrowdStrike security expert had sent the DNC a proprietary software package, called Falcon, that monitors the networks of its clients in real time. Falcon "lit up," the email said, within ten seconds of being installed at the DNC: Russia was in the network. (From Esquire-- Esquire Magazine offers a different timeline)
We are asked to believe that the Russians were in the DNC network on the 6 th of May and that Crowd Strike knew it. But what steps did Crowd Strike take to shut down the "Russians." Short answer -- nothing until June 10 th .
The DNC emails were taken on the 25 th of May 2016. That is the last date for the DNC emails posted on Wikileaks.
Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima and Esquire magazine each reported that that the CrowdStrike effort did not shut down the DNC network until 10 June. If you know on May 6 th that the "Russians" are in the network, why does any credible, competent cyber security company wait until the 10 th of June to shut the system down?
I believe this is a cover story. Here is what I think really happened.
Seth Rich, a DNC employee and Bernie Sanders supporter, downloaded the emails and then gave them to Wikileaks. Rich was in contact with Wikileaks. That is not my opinion. We know that courtesy of a FOIA request by lawyer Ty Clevenger to the NSA filed in November 2017, who requested any information regarding Seth Rich and Julian Assange. The NSA informed Clevenger in a letter dated 4 October 2018 that:
Your request has been processed under the provisions of the FOIA. Fifteen documents (32 pages) responsive to your request have been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and have found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526. These documents meet the criteria for classification as set forth in Subparagraph © of Section 1.4 and remains classified TOP SECRET and SECRET."
Former NSA Technical Director, William Binney commented on this revelation:
Ty Clevenger has FOIAed information from NSA asking for any data that involved both Seth Rich and also Julian Assange. And they responded by saying we've got 15 files, 32 pages, but they're all classified in accordance with executive order 13526 covering classification, and therefore you can't have them.
That says that NSA has records of communications between Seth Rich and Julian Assange. I mean, that's the only business that NSA is in -- copying communications between people and devices.
We already know, as noted above, that the CIA had a task force set up. I believe this intelligence was communicated to the Clinton campaign and that a bogus story, with Crowd Strike in a starring role, was cooked up. Implausible? Not as implausible as a supposed cracker jack cyber security company waiting almost six weeks before taking common sense steps to shut down and clean the DNC servers.
It was Crowd Strike with the help of the Washington Post that went public and pinned the blame on the Russians.
But that was not the only active measure in place. Christopher Steele, a fully signed up FBI informant, was hired by Fusion GPS and produced his first block buster report on June 20 th claiming Trump was under the thumb of Vladimir Putin.
This is not a complete timeline. More remains to be discovered. But there are key facts that most of the media and punditry have ignored. Donald Trump's announcement tonight (Thursday, 23 May 2019) to start declassifying documents on the Trump counter intelligence investigation and directing the intelligence agencies to cooperate may be the final straw that ends the conspiracy of ignorance.
Posted at 07:53 AM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink
Eric Newhill , 24 May 2019 at 10:42 AM
O'Shawnessey , 24 May 2019 at 11:22 AMLarry,
Once again, thank you for the good work on this important topic. Looking forward to your future installments.
Things should get very interesting with the declassification in force. Can you see the NSA/Seth Rich/Wikileaks material being made declassified as well (albeit redacted for methods, etc of course)?
The Twisted Genius -> O'Shawnessey... , 24 May 2019 at 09:49 PMCan Barr declassify the Rich/Assange material? Also, was Skripal one of Steele's "sources"?
Factotum , 24 May 2019 at 12:14 PMO'Shawnessey, if the Rich/Assange material establishes communication between the two, I would expect it to be declassified to bolster the "Russia didn't do it" narrative. Even if that communication was't specifically about transferring DNC files or the actual transference of DNC files, it would be useful to Russia and/or Trump supporters.
If, OTOH, the file NSA files consist of Assange discussing the use of Rich as a useful scapegoat, the files will never see the light of day. According to what Larry has written, Clevenger asked for files with information involving Rich and Assange and did not specify communications between Assange and Rich.
Clevenger should have at least specified a cut off date. If the NSA files were produced before Rich's death, it would be a gold mine for Barr and Trump. If the documents covered the time after Rich's death, not so much.
My theory is that the Rich as leaker story is similar to the whole G2 story. They muddy the water and create chaos. Classic maskirovka.
Larry Johnson -> Factotum... , 24 May 2019 at 12:47 PMJoseph Mifsud is missing in this time line. He always appeared to be the most curious player. Any reason he is left out?
Doggrotter , 24 May 2019 at 12:44 PMIf you re-read closely I reference Timofeev who was introduced to Papadopolous by MIFSUD. He's there.
Thanks for askingbegob -> Doggrotter... , 25 May 2019 at 02:03 AMSiht, I hadn't even thought about classified info on SR. I had thought about how it would be interesting if it turned out Sanders had been spied on. Seriously explosive stuff. Something about Robert Duvall using the other N word, quote from Apocalypse Now.
jjc , 24 May 2019 at 02:41 PMThis is the second time in the past few weeks I've read about surveillance on Sanders. Is there a link to a reliable source?
I believe it's established that a guy from the UK worked in his campaign, and is now on the Integrity Initiative payroll. And the investigation into his wife's role in the financial affairs of the college she works for seems mysteriously to have run into the sands.
Tidewater -> Keith Harbaugh... , 24 May 2019 at 04:32 PMBefore joining Manafort in Kiev, Kliminik worked for almost a decade in Moscow for the International Republican Institute, effectively running that office for some of those years. The IRI is part of the NED/USAID network. There is no way an identified "GRU agent" would be permitted as a long time employee of such an organization.
The Mueller team deliberately seeded the suspicion, and credulous journalists speculated on polling data without pause. Kliminik was, in effect, Manafort's deputy in Kiev, working very closely with him - so again for the Mueller team to suggest there was anything at all sinister in the two men holding meetings, whether tied to campaign events or not, is unfounded speculation, which should have been obvious to all.
begob -> Keith Harbaugh... , 25 May 2019 at 02:05 AMI've been waiting for that one. Next comes Papadopoulos. I think the British Fraud Act of 2006 is quite relevant to what Halper was doing. Cambridge University, Magdalene College, even Pembroke College would seem to me to be at risk for lawsuits. Fraud Act 2006 Wikipedia explains why litigation is now appropriate.
Please see: Fraud Act 2006 Wikipedia
Keith Harbaugh , 24 May 2019 at 03:14 PMI believe Glenn Greenwald has weighed in on this one. You should be able to find his views in an online search.
akaPatience , 24 May 2019 at 06:41 PMSundance provides quite a bit of information regarding Trump's declassification memorandum:
"President Trump's Declassification Directive Outlines Specific Process and Direction ." , by sundance, 2019-05-24
To avoid the conflict [of interest] President Trump designates the U.S. Attorney General as arbiter and decision-maker for the purposes of declassifying evidence within the investigation
...
[etc.]joanna -> akaPatience ... , 25 May 2019 at 12:43 PMI realize Larry Johnson's already alluded to the existence of NSA files about communications between Seth Rich and Julian Assange, but the implications are finally sinking in as to how evil this whole mess is.
I've always been dismissive of those who've made comments about "Arkancide" in connection with the Clintons, but I may have to revise my POV. I wonder who was involved in the process of getting rid of Mr. Rich?
It's horrible to even ponder...
ex-PFC Chuck , 24 May 2019 at 09:41 PMWasn't there a "murder case" in DC itself? In other words do you really need to lead us down to Arkansas, murky real estate deals, drugs, extramarital relationships bordering on rapes and other shady associate networks? But I agree, suicided may not fit all too well.
Ghost Ship -> ex-PFC Chuck... , 26 May 2019 at 05:56 AMI am struck by the irony of the Trump administration is prosecuting Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for actions that are common journalistic practices, while simultaneously conducting an investigation that is closing in on malefactors of high position for probable actions that threaten the very core of our democracy and which in all likelihood would still be unknown to the public were it not for the work of that same heterodox journalist.
Factotum , 24 May 2019 at 10:53 PMI suspect that the Trump government really doesn't want Assange extradited but feels it has to be seen to have gone through the motions. 17+ indictments might be effective in the American judicial system but here in good old Blighty it's way too many and they might all be thrown out as being oppressive.
But then again the Conservative government after Brexit will be a bunch of craven shits desperate for a trade deal from Trump and will reply "how high" when he says jump.walrus , 25 May 2019 at 07:53 PMDeclassify the list of persons "Samantha Powers" asked FISA courts to unmask during the 11th hours of the Obama administration. Or learn who signed her name to these requests, if in fact she did not as she claimed.
Factotum , 25 May 2019 at 11:56 PMI'm concerned that Assange may not live long enough to stand trial because he is capable of closing too many open investigations.
Redstate reports the 260 FISA unmasking requests in 2016 in Samantha Power name were perhaps for an Israel Settlesment-gate; not Russiagate? https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/05/25/samantha-powers-unmasked-260-americans-2016-soon-well-learn/
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Apr 30, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
... ... ...
The Judge then proceeds to give Folkenflik and NPR an ass whooping:
Evaluating the August 1 Report as a whole, the Court finds because of material additions and misleading juxtapositions, an objectively reasonable reader could conclude the report mischaracterized Plaintiff's role in the Seth Rich investigation and "thereby cast more suspicion on [Plaintiff's] actions than an accurate account would have warranted."24 Turner, 38 S.W. 3d at 119 ("But by omitting key facts and falsely juxtaposing others, the broadcast's misleading account cast more suspicion on Turner's conduct than a substantially true account would have done. Thus, it was both false and defamatory."). The August 1 Report as a whole is reasonably capable of a defamatory meaning because it goes "beyond merely reporting materially true facts." White, 909 F.2d at 521. . . .
Folkenflik implied Plaintiff fabricated the story about Seth Rich and WikiLeaks. The Court agrees, especially when read in context with the rest of the statements contained in the August 1 Report. . . .
The Court finds the August 1 Report, as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and is capable of defamatory meaning. . . .
The Court finds Folkenflik's statements in the Mediaite Interview, as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and are capable of defamatory meaning.
The August 7 Report contains three alleged defamatory statements: (1) Fox News had a "role" in "concocting a baseless story" on the death of Seth Rich; (2) Fox was involved in a "journalistic scandal" over the story; and (3) Fox "concocted" the story "in order to help President Trump." Unlike the other reports discussed above, Plaintiff is not mentioned in the August 7 Report. According to the Complaint, the August 7 Report, "[r]ead together with the [August 1 Report], the overall tenor and context of Folkenlik's messages was that Butowsky lied, was dishonest, and aided, abetted and actively participated in a fraudulent journalistic scandal." Docket Entry # 1 at 36, n. 12.
According to Plaintiff, the overall "gist" is that Fox News and Plaintiff worked together, each playing a "role," to "concoct" a "baseless story" that resulted in a journalistic "scandal." Docket Entry # 32 at 24. At this stage of the proceedings, accepting the allegations in the Complaint as true, the Court finds the August 7 Report can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes.
. . . .According to Plaintiff, Folkenflik's statement, explicitly or by implication, accuses him of engaging in "activities" that caused harm to the Rich Family and that Plaintiff lacked empathy and understanding that his actions "affected" the Riches. The Court finds the August 16 Report, considered as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and is capable of defamatory meaning .
. . . . Plaintiff asserts the word "player" carries a very heavy negative connotation and "highlights Folkenflik's malicious agenda and extreme bias." Docket Entry # 32 at 26. The Court finds the September 15 Report, as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and is capable of defamatory meaning.
In sum, the Court finds Plaintiff has alleged the gist of the reports can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes. Because the reports are "reasonably capable" of communicating the meaning Plaintiff proposes, the next question is whether that meaning is "reasonably capable" of defaming Plaintiff. Tatum, 554 S.W.3d at 637. The Court concludes it is, as discussed further below on actual malice.28
Boys and girls, this is a Shaquille O'Neal equivalent of a slam dunk. I am sure that the NPR lawyers will continue to try to escape this judgment. Odds are they will fail. When that happens, they will be ready to sit down and negotiate a settlement to make this case go away.
Folkenflick is a hack. A partisan hack. Karma is a bitch and Folkenflik is likely to get bitch slapped in a big way. Instead of reporting the story straight up, he opted for a propaganda hit job. He is unworthy of the title, journalist.
akaPatience , 30 April 2019 at 12:02 AM
Seth Rich's parents sued FOX over Zimmerman's report (which was later retracted) but the suit was dismissed in its entirety. Wheeler's suit against FOX, Butowsky and Zimmerman (who he claimed misquoted him about the Rich-Wikileaks link) was also dismissed mainly because of the other interview he gave to local FOX5 DC in which he also claimed a Rich-Wikileaks link.Ken , 30 April 2019 at 12:18 AMI wonder what evidence Wheeler gathered on his own to make him initially suggest a link between Seth Rich and Wikileaks - and a DC coverup of his murder - only to eventually backpedal? Does anyone know? Zimmerman's [retracted] report said "multiple sources" linked Rich to Wikileaks.
Does anybody know where the video of Malia Zimmerman interviewing Rod Wheeler can be found. My memory is that Zimmerman said her own independent source confirmed that the FBI knew Seth Rich had contacted WikiLeaks. But after the controversy exploded the video disappeared from YouTube and the Internet.Larry Johnson -> Ken... , 30 April 2019 at 12:22 AMI know who Malia talked to. She was right. The FBI knew Seth contacted Assange.Ken said in reply to Larry Johnson ... , 30 April 2019 at 12:59 AMLarry,Larry Johnson , 30 April 2019 at 01:32 AMAre the actual court documents online? If so please provide a link. Also if you come across the video of the interview with Wheeler, please share it. By the way, you got a shoutout in NJ's largest newspaper from Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine recently.
I enjoy your work. Thanks
The doc is on Pacer. It requires a subscription.Ken said in reply to Larry Johnson ... , 30 April 2019 at 03:00 AMThank you. I didn't mean to make you do so much work. I really appreciate it.English Outsider -> Larry Johnson ... , 30 April 2019 at 06:25 AMThank you for this and your previous work. So lucid that even an outsider can follow it.Christian J Chuba , 30 April 2019 at 07:34 AMWhat with this and a few other bits and pieces seems the swamp went a bit mad in 2016. Or is it always like this and the 2016 upheaval just left a few more loose threads hanging than normal?
Regarding Sean Hannity, can't stand watching him because he has a knack for memorizing talking points and then robotically repeat them word for word. For example, he always refers to the Steele dossier as the 'dirty fake Russian dossier from Vladimir Putin'.David Habakkuk , 30 April 2019 at 10:10 AMHe's trying to make Trump sound like the victim of Russia which is clever but not honest. The only link to Russia is that one of Steele's alleged sources was Russian while others were likely Ukrainian. If he wants to attribute a conspiracy to it, definitely the DNC, elements in the U.K. govt HRC, and definitely Ukraine had a preference for HRC.
Larry,Ligurio said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 30 April 2019 at 12:08 PMThat is fascinating, and heartening. I was aware of the case that Butowsky had brought against CNN, the NYT and the lawyers for the Rich family, not of that he bought against David Folkenflik and his NPR colleagues.
If indeed as many of us suspected the FBI knew that Rich had contacted Assange, this leads one back naturally to some matters concerned with the timeline of the identification of the DNC leaks, and Rich's role in them, which have been puzzling me.
In affairs like this, it is very easy to connect dots and form a pattern which looks plausible but turns out completely wrong. With the proviso that I may be doing precisely that, let me set out some dots and ways they might be fitted together.
1. It has long seemed to me that it would have been very much easier to identify materials coming in to Assange and WikiLeaks rather than materials coming out of the DNC. If in fact this was how the exfiltration was originally identified, then it would be quite likely that GCHQ and/or MI6 would have been centrally involved. (This of course does not mean that the NSA and employees of the CIA or indeed FBI were not also involved: a lot of people would have had strong reasons to collude, and indeed increasingly indeed have come to seem to have been living more or less in each other's pockets);
2. Particularly as it seems likely that Rich wanted money, it would seem quite possible that negotiations with Assange started some time prior to the exfiltration of the material, which looks as though it happened in late May 2016;
3. If one assumes that Rich was aware of the intense surveillance on WikiLeaks, one would think it likely that he would have contacted Assange in a manner designed to ensure that his identity was protected, in so far as this was feasible. This could possibly have involved not making it known, at the outset, to Assange, although presumably it would have had to be revealed at some relatively early point. One would further tend to assume that it would have been a priority to set up channels of communication which, as far as could be managed, were secure. Doing so could have involved the use of intermediaries, and measures to disguise the identity of Rich.
4. Quite clearly, if indeed there was a serious effort to maintain secrecy, it was penetrated. But it would be possible that the penetration was gradual and piecemeal. At the outset, it might not even have been clear whether what was at issue was a leak or a hack. It would not be surprising if intense effort had gone into identifying past hacking attempts, unsuccessful and successful. And indeed, it would seem eminently possible that attempts were identified that could have been instigated by Russian intelligence agencies. These, however, would also have involved elaborate measures to conceal responsibility – not crude fabrications that would only take in 'retards', like the 'Guccifer 2.0' materials.
5. It would also be possible that Rich was not identified until very late in the day – indeed, his identification could even have followed the calling in of the laptops on June 10.
Such a reconstruction could account for the fact that both the claims by Alperovitch and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait, and the 'Guccifer 2.0' farrago, show every sign of having been concocted in panic haste, as also do the early memoranda in the dossier attributed to Steele. If those involved had not known what was actually going on until late in the day, that might have added to the difficulties of planning stories to cover it up. It might also help explain the bizarre inconsistencies and improbabilities in the claims about the investigation carried out by Alperovitch and CrowdStrike.
6. Of course, an alternative possibility is that Rich was either too naive to anticipate that he would be identified, or did not think it would matter. It would hardly have been so very surprising if he had not contemplated the possibility that the result of his involvement would be his murder, and part of the point of the negotiations about money could have been to ensure that he could afford to disregard any employment consequences.
Be all that may, it does seem to me that it would be helpful, in relation to fitting other events into a coherent timeline, to have some idea as to the earliest and latest dates at which the exfiltration could have been identified, and the earliest and latest dates at which Rich could have been identified as the figure responsible.
Since Craig Murray received in person the DNC and Podesta files from an "intermediary" in the woods adjoining American University in Washington D.C., establishing the date or dates of Murray's trip could help establish the timeframe proposed above.Anonymous , 30 April 2019 at 12:08 PM"Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information but an intermediary.'"
If Rich did the leak, that doesn't mean he was killed for it. They are separate events, each with their own possibilities.I personally find it very hard to believe the Arkancide theory. But very easy to believe that the DNC leaks were from an annoyed Bernie supporter like Rich. After all, the content of the leaks showed that there really was a lot of finky poo going on at the DNC with the Clinton campaign to be unfair to Bernie.
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Apr 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
There is also the question of Russiagate. It goes without saying that Trump would covet an opportunity to settle scores with the Democratic Party over that witch hunt, which, in cahoots with the mainstream media, stalked the US leader and his administration for two painstaking years. And even now, after the release of the Mueller Report, the Democrats refuse to throw in the towel and are plotting to interrogate the interrogator himself, Robert Mueller. This is where Julian Assange might help halt the madness, although that is not to suggest, of course, that he is necessarily predisposed to such an opportunity. Yet he may find himself with no choice in the matter. Before continuing with that line of discussion, there are some rather strange things about the Assange case that need mentioning.
For those who may have forgotten, and it seems that many have, Rich, 27, was the Director of Voter Expansion Data at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the time of his death. In other words, he would have been in the loop to view emails showing foul play inside of the DNC. What kind of foul play? Well, for starters, deliberate efforts to marginalize Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton, who responded to the arrest of Julian Assange with her trademark cackle before remarking, "The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it has been charged." For Hillary Clinton that means wrecking her chances at the White House.
Incidentally, it was at this time in history, in July 2016 during the release of the incriminating DNC emails, when the perennial bogeyman Russia was wheeled out as not only the source of the emails, but the kingmaker in the US election as well.
At this point, it is important to emphasize that there is no proof to suggest that Rich had anything to with leaking the DNC emails to WikiLeaks. In fact, to merely suggest such a thing has been given the 'conspiracy theory' stamp of disapproval by the establishment. Yet that has not stopped the flow of mysteries. For example, Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by the Rich family to investigate the death of their son, said he had sources at the FBI who "absolutely" confirmed that there was evidence on Rich's laptop that indicates he was communicating with WikiLeaks prior to his death. However, just days after divulging this explosive information, Wheeler backtracked on his statement, calling his on-air comments a "miscommunication."
For what it is worth, Snopes has called the claims that Rich leaked the emails as "false."
Yet, there remains the circumstantial evidence, namely Rich's untimely death, as well as its uncanny timing. There also remains the question of his supervisory position inside of the DNC, and the assertion that the DNC emails were not discovered by hackers, but rather a leaker. In other words, an internal source at the DNC. Whether or not Mr. Rich was that source remains questionable, however, Julian Assange not only referred to Seth Rich during an interview, he offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of his killer or killers.
"Whistle-blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks," Assange said in an interview with a Dutch television station. "There's a 27-year-old who 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."
When pressed for more information, he said, "I'm suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that."
On the basis of that comment, Assange could potentially be called to testify as a witness should the authorities decide to reopen the case of Seth Rich's murder.
This leads us to the million-dollar question: were the DNC computers hacked by the Russians or was the data leaked by an internal source at the organization and forwarded to WikiLeaks? The answer to that question would not only settle the 'Russian meddling' mystery once and for all, it would determine how the DNC/Clinton emails were compromised.
Many people are of the opinion it was not the Russians.
William Binney, a former National Security Agency official-turned-whistleblower and member of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), co-authored a report (entitled, "Why the DNC was not hacked by the Russians") that says the WikiLeaks dump was the result of a leak by "a person with physical access to the DNC's computer system."
"The NSA had an opportunity to make it clear that there was irrefutable proof of Russian meddling, particularly with regard to the DNC hack, when it signed on to the January 2017 'Intelligence Community Assessment,'" Binney wrote.
Instead, the NSA could only say it has "moderate confidence," which means, in intelligence speak, "we have no hard evidence," the pair concluded.
Meanwhile, there remains the question as to how any conclusion could have been made when the DNC refused to hand over the compromised computer servers to the FBI.
"We'd always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that's possible," former FBI head James Comey told lawmakers in October 2017. He added that he didn't know why the DNC refused the FBI, which was forced to rely on data provided by CrowdStrike, a private security firm hired by the DNC.
Following the release of the Mueller Report, which failed to find any proof that Trump colluded with the Russians, there remains a glaring yet unproven accusation that needs addressed: that is the allegation that the Russians somehow fixed the election in Trump's favor.
Although the mainstream media may be ignoring Binney's findings, that doesn't mean everyone is. In October 2017, Binney paid a visit to CIA headquarters, at the invitation of Donald Trump, where he met with then agency director Mike Pompeo, as cited by The Intercept.
Any guesses whose name was brought up in the course of the meeting between Binney and Pompeo? Yes, that of Seth Rich. Again, whether or not that proves to be significant remains an open question.
But make no mistake. Donald Trump would like nothing more than to remove the ugly footnote that the Democrats have tacked to his presidency that says the Russians "succeeded beyond their wildest dreams," to quote former intelligence chief James Clapper, by stealing the White House from Hillary Clinton. In other words, Trump does not deserve to be president, the Democrats continue to chant mindlessly. And even after the Mueller Report talk of impeachment continues to hang in the air. The only way to confront the insanity is to have Mr. Assange testify in the United States, possibly as the result of a plea bargain, about his knowledge of Russiagate.
In fact, such an arrangement had been made before. In January 2017, Assange's lawyer Adam Waldman "negotiated with the Justice Department on a possible deal to get the WikiLeaks founder limited immunity and safe passage out of a London embassy to talk with U.S. officials," according to a report by The Hill.
Among other things, Assange would have been expected to "provide technical information to the U.S. ruling out certain suspects in the release of hacked DNC emails key to the Russia case "
But the negotiations hit a snag and – according to a source cited by John Solomon of The Hill – James Comey told Assange's lawyer to "stand down" on the offer.
Now, considering that many of the 'old Obama guard' – like James Comey, the fired FBI director, and Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr – are no longer steering the investigation, there remains the possibility that the Trump administration will be willing to hear what WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has to say about the greatest witch hunt in the history of US politics . Assange's testimony, should it happen, may even help solve the mystery of the Seth Rich murder.
In other words, don't believe that Russiagate has concluded. Indeed, it may have only just begun.
tonye , 2 minutes ago link
Right Wing-Nut , 7 minutes ago linkOr, if the British keep holding onto him, it might be the Deep Estate and the Obola/Clinton cabals want to keep Assange on ice so that he won't put the kabosh on the Russia Gate narrative.
archie bird , 22 minutes ago linkThe real Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy right within the bowels of the US Government.
And we have this from August 2017:
Republican California Representative Dana Rohrabacher met with WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London this week.
According to Rohrabacher, Assange "reaffirmed his aggressive denial that the Russians had anything to do with the hacking of the DNC during the election," in the meeting, adding, "He has given us a lot of information. He said there's more to come. We don't have the entire picture yet."
Rohrabacher further claimed that the information he received would have "an earth-shattering political impact."
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/17/report-gop-rep-dana-rohrbracher-meets-julian-assange/
PeaceForWorld , 27 minutes ago linkI believe its been determined that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked by Russians. According to different reports the emails were downloaded to a thumbdrive as a fantastic speed, much to fast for it to be a hack.
I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 50 minutes ago linkI was running one of the largest Bernie Groups and I was Bernie or Bust. I really believe that Seth Reich did leak the info to Julian Assange and he was killed as a hero. DWS who is a criminal was definitely involved and I wouldn't doubt about Mossad's involvement. Mossad is very sneaky and professional in killing. All we need is DNC Fraud Lawsuit. But even Becks were threatened and the case didn't go anywhere.
Trump is just extremely selfish and he used Wikileaks in his campaign by defending him. But he doesn't give a damn about Julian Assange.
Dr. Acula , 48 minutes ago linkUnless the Republican leader's declared intention along the campaign trail to 'drain the swamp' was mere rhetorical bombast...
Jesus ******* Christ. 😣
look there are people, who if Trump appointed Bill Kristol chief of staff, would still insist Trump is draining the swamp.
these people are incorrigible morons, and should be disallowed sharp objects and plastic bags.
Bolton, Haley, Pompeo, Abramson.... helloooo!! McFuckingFlyyyyyy!!!
shortingurass , 36 minutes ago linkThe stupid... It burns
Keter , 7 minutes ago linkI agree. I'm ******* tired of dumbasses trying to paint Trump as a swamp-drainer when he has already proven he's a swamp creature himself, surrounded by zios and neocons.
CatInTheHat , 50 minutes ago linkThe neocons are bad, but it is the failure on the border, with hundreds of thousands of visa overstays, and legal immigration increases of third world refugees, h1bs, and h2bs that most egregious of the Trump administration.
"This leads us to the million-dollar question: were the DNC computers hacked by the Russians or was the data leaked by an internal source at the organization and forwarded to WikiLeaks? The answer to that question would not only settle the 'Russian meddling' mystery once and for all, it would determine how the DNC/Clinton emails were compromised."
This author is off his nut
This is exactly why Julian is being shut down. Unable to see even his lawyers, being denied medical treatment and likely being tortured.
This is why Comey sabotaged the deal..
Russia hack = IRAQI WMD. The elite are determined to manufacture public consent for war on Russia.
They know Julian would not only destroy this narrative but that he would create a mass back lash for all of US who knew Russiagate was ******** in the first place.
Trump is a Zionist stooge is arming and funding the NEONAZI THUGS in Ukraine right along with Israhsll.
He has ZERO intention of doing what the author suggest. This is pure fantasy with absolutely ZERO to back it up.
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Apr 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
I'm just going to toss this one here at the end because I'm seeing it go around a lot in the wake of the Mueller report.
Robert Mueller, who helped the Bush administration deceive the world about WMD in Iraq, has claimed that the GRU was the source of WikiLeaks' 2016 drops, and claimed in his report that WikiLeaks deceived its audience by implying that its source was the murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich.
This claim is unsubstantiated because, as we discussed in Smear 4, the public has not seen a shred of evidence proving who was or was not WikiLeaks' source, so there's no way to know there was any deception happening there. We've never seen any hard proof, nor indeed anything besides official narrative, connecting the Russian government to Guccifer 2.0 and Guccifer 2.0 to WikiLeaks, and Daniel Lazare for Consortium News documents that there are in fact some major plot holes in Mueller's timeline. Longtime Assange friend and WikiLeaks ally Craig Murray maintains that he knows the source of the DNC Leaks and Podesta Emails were two different Americans, not Russians, and hints that one of them was a DNC insider. There is exactly as much publicly available evidence for Murray's claim as there is for Mueller's.
Mainstream media has been blaring day after day for years that it is an absolute known fact that the Russian government was WikiLeaks' source, and the only reason people scoff and roll their eyes at anyone who makes the indisputably factual claim that we've seen no evidence for this is because the illusory truth effect causes the human brain to mistake repetition for fact.
The smear is that Assange knew his source was actually the Russian government, and he implied it was Seth Rich to throw people off the scent. Mueller asserted that something happened, and it's interpreted as hard fact instead of assertion. There's no evidence for any of this, and there's no reason to go believing the WMD guy on faith about a narrative which incriminates yet another government which refuses to obey the dictates of the US empire.
And I guess that's it for now. Again, this article is an ongoing project, so I'll be updating it and adding to it regularly as new information comes in and new smears need refutation. If I missed something or got something wrong, or even if you spotted a typo, please email me at [email protected] and let me know. I'm trying to create the best possible tool for people to refute Assange smears, so I'll keep sharpening this baby to make sure it cuts like a razor. Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who helped! Phew! That was long.
motherjones , 52 minutes ago link
We don't have to like Julian Assange, but the release of the "Collateral Damage" video alone is enough to justify defending Assange and the freedom of the press.
Ozymandiasssss , 1 hour ago link
bh2 , 1 hour ago linkShe really didn't debunk the thing about Seth Rich very well. Basically just said that whatever Mueller said wasn't true, which doesn't go very far for me. He definitely did imply that he got at least some of his info from Rich so if there is some sort of proof of that, it needs to be supplied; otherwise Mueller's story is the only one.
beemasters , 2 hours ago linkHItchen's Razor: "what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
Downtoolong , 2 hours ago linkI have recently seen a political cartoon with Dotard then saying: "I love Wikileaks" + " I will throw her in jail" and now saying: "I know nothing about Wikileaks" + "I will throw him in jail"
It summed up perfectly that swine's lack of integrity.
beemasters , 1 hour ago linkIt's so simple. Assange and Wikileaks exposed Hillary, Podesta, and the entire DNC to be lying, deceiving, hypocritical, disingenuous, elitist bastards. His crimes are miniscule compared to that, and all who attempt to condemn Assange only show us that they are members of that foul group.
TotalMachineFail , 3 hours ago linkYet Dotard didn't push hard at all to get Killary, Podesta & friends charged...not even tweets calling for it since he got elected.
freedommusic , 3 hours ago linkExcellent thorough content. And Kim Schmitz pointed out they'll drag things on for as long as possible and try to add additional things as they go. Such a bunch of sad, pathetic control freaks. Covering up their own failures, crimes and short comings with a highly publicized distraction putting the screws to a single journalist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBs1dgYL-7w
When the next world leader is Kashoggied nobody is going to care.
RussianSniper , 3 hours ago link“ Ty Clevenger has FOIAed information from NSA asking for any data that involved both Seth Rich and also Julian Assange .
And they responded by saying we’ve got 15 files , 32 pages , but they’re all classified in accordance with executive order 13526 covering classification, and therefore you can’t have them.
That says that NSA has records of communications between Seth Rich and Julian Assange. I mean, that’s the only business that NSA is in — copying communications between people and devices.”
—Bill Binney (NSA 30 year vet)
( source )
Dugald , 2 hours ago linkLong story!
Important topic!!
Assange and Snowden are freedom fighters, exposing the duplicitous, corrupt, and criminals to the entire world.
The hundreds of millions of mindless zombies are so brainwashed by the fake news industry, that if Assange and Snowden are not spies, they are criminal in some capacity.
I have liberal, conservative, and libertarian leaning friends, and virtually every one of them believe Assange and Snowden are traitors to America, got innocent people killed, are rapists, or too cowardly to stand trial in the USA.
What has happened to common sense and some necessary cynicism?
LetThemEatRand , 3 hours ago linkThe trouble with Common Sense is it's not all that common.....
fezline , 3 hours ago linkWhy even bother arguing with these people. Assange gave up his liberty to reveal the truth, and the American public said in essence "so what." No one except the leakers and whistle-blowers faced any punishment, and I can't think of a single national politician who even talks about doing anything about the misconduct that was revealed. Yeah, a small percentage of the population is outraged at what was revealed, but the vast majority literally don't give a ****.
chunga , 3 hours ago linkHehe... I guess you will find out how wrong you are in 2020 :-) His release of Hillary's emails gave Trump 2016... and him turning his back on Assange took away his chances in 2020
LetThemEatRand , 2 hours ago linkMost regular readers on ZH know but this is an echo chamber for "Always Trumpers" so there won't be many commenters on this article. Rather than defend his DOJ's extradition attempts with implausible theories they'll be chattering back and forth about the Mueller Report.
/winning
ZENDOG , 3 hours ago linkAgreed. It's amazing to me that people who claim to be believers of the MAGA message don't see the harm associated with the arrest of Assange, and all of the other uniparty **** Trump is perpetuating. A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.
fezline , 3 hours ago linkWhole lot of yadda yadda yadda about someone 99.9% of Americans don't know.
And even less who give a ****.
Hillary dead yet?
Yeah and yet.... everyone seemed to credit Hillary's loss to the release of her emails on wikileaks... Hmm that narrative that seems to be trying to minimize the impact on Trumps chances in 2020 really breaks down in the face of that fact doesn't it?? Trump has no hope... just stop... get behind a republican that has a chance... Trump doesn't... he lost half of his base... get over it...
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Feb 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Jen , Feb 12, 2019 10:54:05 PM | link
James @ 65, Spudski @ 54, Bevin @ 38:spudski , Feb 12, 2019 11:48:22 PM | linkMy understanding is that the Democratic Party person who passed the USB stick to Craig Murray was not Seth Rich. Seth Rich died on 10 July 2016 and Murray received the USB stick in September of the same year. So there were quite a few disgruntled Democratic Party whistleblowers at the time.
@Jen 70james , Feb 13, 2019 1:12:42 AM | linkYou're right - Seth Rich was not alive in September 2016. Craig Murray says he received a package in a wooded area near the American University in Washington DC in September 2016 from "the source" and that the leak source was the deed of a disgruntled Democrat employee.
@71 jen / 73 spudski... i went and checked craigs site, but was unable to find him mentioning this.. i did re-read his post from july 3rd 2017 that came up in a search of seth rich.. The Stink Without a SecretJackrabbit , Feb 13, 2019 7:21:34 AM | linkto quote from it.. "That is it. To this day, that is the sum total of actual "evidence" of Russian hacking. I won't say hang on to it as a fact, because it contains no relevant fact. But at least it is some form of definable allegation of something happening, rather than "Russian hacking" being a simple article of faith like the Holy Trinity.
But there are a number of problems that prevent this being fact at all. Nobody has ever been able to refute the evidence of Bill Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA who designed its current surveillance systems. Bill has stated that the capability of the NSA is such, that if the DNC computers had been hacked, the NSA would be able to trace the actual packets of that information as those emails travelled over the internet, and give a precise time, to the second, for the hack. The NSA simply do not have the event – because there wasn't one. I know Bill personally and am quite certain of his integrity.
As we have been repeatedly told, "17 intelligence agencies" sign up to the "Russian hacking", yet all these king's horses and all these king's men have been unable to produce any evidence whatsoever of the purported "hack". Largely because they are not in fact trying. Here is another actual fact I wish you to hang on to: The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened. I am going to say that again.
The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened." - why is that???
james, jen, spudski, bevinpantaraxia , Feb 13, 2019 8:07:59 AM | linkLook at the interviews of Seth Rich's family on Youtube. The interviews are just weird. And the Seth Rich family has acted in a weird way too.
Seymour Hersh, surreptitiously taped while discussing Seth Rich's murder.Jackrabbit , Feb 13, 2019 8:39:31 AM | linkSeymour Hersh discussing Wikileaks DNC leaks Seth Rich & FBI report (6:30 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJpQPGeUeQYAs you consider the weirdness of the Rich family, also keep in mind the substantial efforts made to discredit and disable Assange/Wikileaks and Trump's call, in summer 2016) for Putin to release Hillary's lost emails.spudski , Feb 13, 2019 10:38:17 AM | linkThe timeline is as follows:
January 2016>> Trump's positioning as pro-Russia was bolstered by his hiring pro-Russia Manafort who has links to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. This is a strange choice for the "America First" Trump campaign.
FBI report says Hillary emails contained highly classified info
By this time, Trump has all but locked up the GOP nomination - Michael Bloomberg makes urgent public announcement that may enter the race to prevent Sanders and Trump from winning.February 2016
Never Trump Movement is bornMarch/April 2016
Trump hires ManafortMay 2016
DNC is hackedJune 2016
Trump Jr. meets with Russians that say they have info about HillaryJuly 2016
Wikileaks publishes DNC emails (July 22)
Trump">https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html">Trump calls on Putin to release Hillary's lost emails (July 28)July 2016
Manafort resigns/is firedSeptember 2016
Flynn signs agreement with Turk company Inovo BV: $500k "sweatheart deal"October 2016
Assange's Internet access is terminated for the first time due to "election interference" by publishing DNC emailsNovember 2016
Flynn's agreement with Turk company ends on election day (Nov 8)
Flynn accepts position as National Security Advisor (Nov 18)January 2017
Flynn is under investigation due to his work for Inovo BV
Chuck Schumer says Intel agencies "have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you"February 2017
Trump fires Flynn after he is evasive/untruthful about his conversation with Russian Ambassador>> Assange/Wikileaks and Flynn are all ultimately snared by anti-Russia hysteria. Wikileaks would later be described as a "hostile intelligence agency" and Assange as a "Russian agent".
james @75james , Feb 13, 2019 12:18:47 PM | linkCM does say this in a December 2016 post:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/
[The overall extract is between the lines below.]
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result "was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:
"The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was "directing" the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up."
"I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
"If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA's statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.
"America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it's not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever."But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________jackrabbit
Thanks for the info. The Seth Rich story always bothered me. I also recall that in one article CM was quoted as saying that who he got the leaked materials was not "the source." Was the original source SR?
@84/87 jr / @91 spudski... thanks for all that..i tend to believe julian assange when he says the stakes are very high when one is involved in sharing information that could be detrimental others - a large organization in particular, and etc..
I suppose the 2 choices here are one believes either Seth Rich was murdered in a bad part of Washington dc - conceivable, or that someone knew he had passed the emails and wanted to kill him for it..
If you believe 2 - then you have to come up with a reason for why they had to kill him.. The reason jr appears to offer is it makes Russia and WikiLeaks the 2 main suspects, as opposed to seth rich.. and on and on it goes..
I lean towards the later view which jr articulates, but i don't expect to ever find out..
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Jan 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
All,Dan Feidt~hongpong , 2 months agoTy Clevenger has posted the 4 October letter from the NSA on his 'LawFlog' blog.
See http://lawflog.com/?attachm... .
The request related to four categories of material. The first had to do with communications between Rich and a variety of people. It is interesting that the names of three figures with whom it is not suggested he communicated are Included, the precise phrasing being 'David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson are the attorneys who represented Hillary Clinton.'
Apparently Clevenger has been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to get the trio investigated in relation to the deletion of e-mails from the secret server.
(See https://www.washingtontimes... .)
The second category relates to material concerning phone calls involving Rich on the day he died and the previous day, the third to possible financial transactions involved him and an interesting range of people.
The fourth category covers correspondence involving people in or involved with Congress.
The NSA response refers to an earlier reply dated 7 November 2017 in relation to the first three categories. So far I cannot trace this, but I would assume that this refused access to the material – if it did not there would clearly be rather more than fifteen documents with 32 pages. So these presumably all relate to communications involving Congress.
Another important thread in all this relates to the 10 May 2016 meeting between George Papadopoulos and Alexander Downer. Information has been trickling out about what the former said in his interview with members of the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees on Thursday. And the episode is dealt with in a book by the 'Washington Post' reporter Greg Miller, released earlier this month.
The sequence appears to have been that Papodopoulos was quoted in an interview in the 'Times' on 4 May 2016 saying that our then Prime Minister, David Cameron, should apologise for calling Trump 'divisive, stupid and wrong'. Two days later, an Australian embassy official who knew him suggested that Papadopoulos meet Downer.
According to the version restated by Miller, the FIB 'Crossfire Hurricane' investigation opened on 31 July, following the 'WikiLeaks' publication of the DNC emails on 22 July – with supposedly a belated communication from Downer about the Papadopoulos meeting being an important trigger. If you work for the 'Washington Post', you will of course take all this on trust. Serious journalists would not.
While the complications of the role of the mysterious Maltese Joseph Mifsud still do not seem adequately ironed out, the suggestion that he told Papadopoulos that he had learned that the Russian government had 'dirt' on Clinton in the form of 'thousands' of her emails may well be true. Moreover, it would not necessarily be part of an entrapment operation.
It is perfectly possible that Mifsud did actually retail what he had heard in Moscow, and while this could have been inaccurate gossip, it could also have been accurate.
As I have said before, if there was anything I would find more surprising than the notion that the DNC material came to 'WikiLeaks' from the Russians, it would be that these could not penetrate the obviously appallingly lax security not just of Clinton's server but of the whole Democratic network. (People who could hire the Awan clan are obviously either totally inept at security or totally unconcerned about it.)
(For updates from the 'Daily Caller' on the Papadopoulos interview and Miller book, see https://dailycaller.com/201... and https://dailycaller.com/201... .)
At that point, one comes up against the question of how much substance there is in the claims by Yaacov Apelbaum about the central role in 'Russiagate' of the Hakluyt/Holdingham group, with which Downer was certainly involved.
See https://apelbaum.wordpress....
A possible scenario then would be that, some time in late April or early May, the kind of surveillance on Assange and figures known to be associated with him which we can be reasonably confident was being carried out both by GCHQ and MI6 alerted people to the fact that there had been a leak of material from the DNC.
The accident of Cameron's – characteristically foolish – statement and the Papadopoulos interview could then have led on to his meeting with Downer being set up, at almost exactly the time when 'CrowdStrike' was beginning to work on the DNC servers.
What could have been a piece of accurate gossip out of Russia – although of course it could have been inaccurate gossip or indeed planted disinformation – then encouraged the notion that the leak could be treated as a hack.
Having gone down that route, the possibility of Seth Rich talking obviously became acutely dangerous to all kinds of people.
An accurate account of what was happened was finally passed to 'Fox News', sourced in substantial measure from figures involved with Assange, but the company 'chickened out' in the face of pressure. The Malia Zimmerman story, incidentally, can be viewed at http://www.raidersmerciless... .
If the FOIA request is authentic then it would be in the FOIA logs of the agency which are themselves FOIA-able (in general anyway).Publius Tacitus -> Dan Feidt~hongpong , 2 months agoI would speculate that the material might show that they rooted around for stuff like this, due to the media attention, and thus, some records exist about the idea.
Also re the metadata timing, while the idea of fast copies is reasonable, it is also possible to write a small script which would calculate a fresh set of datetime values at a different rate than the original, wouldn't this be less than 30 lines? (like they could have simply overwritten the metadata date values, from slower copying to an illusion of faster copying.)
On the metadata, NO. I checked with Bill Binney.Mark McCarty , 2 months agoExcellent summary. How did the author get the info on NSA's response to the FOIA request? - cant find it otherwise online.Publius Tacitus -> Mark McCarty , 2 months agoIf Seth had made no attempt to contact Wikileaks - and if the FBI didn't look at his laptop because "we don't investigate murders", then why does the NSA have 32 pages of secret/top secret memos on him?
This article should have cited the Sy Hersh phone tape - Sy, via Butowsky, is the evident source of the Fox report:
Play HideNo, Sy was not the source for the Fox report. Two of the sources are closely tied to Julian's lawyer.Adam Carter , 2 months agoWith the leaks already out, if they wanted to make an example, they could have made his life hell and heaped blame on him for them losing the election, they could have made an example out of him without taking needless risks and without leaving anything to ambiguity (so that it would unquestionably deter others from doing the same).Mark McCarty -> Adam Carter , 2 months agoSo, even if his death wasn't just him accidentally getting shot twice in the torso during a struggle following a bungled robbery attempt in which nothing was stolen... revenge still would have been a questionable motive.
I'd say more but it's probably best for the sake of self-preservation and to prevent opponents from strawman attacks if I don't. Good luck figuring out who could have had a motive.
I don't think that revenge had anything to do with it. If Seth was the real leaker, he was in a position to blow apart the Guccifer 2.0 scam which was the centerpiece of the "Russia interfered" hoax. The conspirators would be much more secure with him out of the way. Also, I suspect that Shawn Lucas may have been one of the friends of Seth who - according to Sy Hersh's account - had access to Seth's dropbox. So that might explain his very mysterious death - a drug overdose involving multiple drugs in someone never known to use drugs.David Habakkuk -> Adam Carter , 2 months agoAdam Carter,Publius Tacitus -> David Habakkuk , 2 months agoOn the question of who might have had a motive to kill Seth Rich, some aspects of the background are worth bearing in mind.
It is very clear that Hillary Clinton divides opinion, very sharply – actually, in Britain almost as much as in the United States. On the one hand, I have found even people whose judgement I would once have trusted quite extraordinarily reluctant to accept that there was anything reprehensible about her glaring security breaches, let alone about anything else she has done.
On the other, there are many people who loathe her and her husband so much that they will believe any mud that is slung at the pair.
What is clear is that, both from a cybersecurity and other perspectives – the Awan family saga being an obvious instance, and the networks in which Huma Abedin is involved perhaps another – the whole Democratic apparatus in which Hillary was a central figure was as leaky as an old sieve.
In such a situation, if I was for example Vladimir Putin, and none of my intelligence services had been able to supply me with something close to a complete set of Hillary Clinton's emails, I would have wanted to know why.
But that, of course, emphatically does not mean that the Russians are a likely conduit for material to have reached Assange. And it also means that, if by any chance Putin and General Gerasimov, who has overall responsibility for the Main Directorate of the General Staff, had decided they wanted the material made public, they could have been expected to look for 'plausible deniability.'
When the ex-GCHQ 'twerp' Matt Tait, then supposedly running a consultancy, 'Capital Alpha Security', which only ever filed 'accounts for a dormant company', and has now been compulsorily wound up, immediately produced evidence backing up the incoherent claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', it was clear that we were dealing with an amateurish cover-up.
The notion that the name and patronymic 'Felix Dzerzhinsky' is likely to have been used by the Main Directorate, previously known as the GRU, could only have been dreamed up by people who are totally ignorant of the history of the relations between the General Staff and the 'Cheka' in the early Soviet period, or, at least, are relying on the ignorance of others.
In addition to this, we have the fact that the initial memoranda in the dossier published by 'BuzzFeed' and – supposedly – authored by Christopher Steele, are both a mess, and contradict the version put out by Alperovitch and Tait. The Ellen Nakashima piece was on 14 June, the first memorandum, which contained the 'golden showers' claim, is dated 20 June – which of course may not be accurate.
There is then a pause, until the first treatment of Russian cyber operations, in a memorandum dated '26 July 2015.' This is clearly a mistype for 2016, so that the date, if correct, is more than a fortnight after the murder of Rich, which was on 10 July. This memorandum makes no mention of the GRU, claims that 'FSB leads on cyber', and also that there had been 'limited success in attacking top foreign targets'.
The next memorandum in the sequence, which is undated, introduces Paul Manafort and Carter Page into the 'rogues' gallery', and contains some very interesting observations about the cyber side. So 'Source E' – described as an 'ethnic Russian close associate' of Trump – supposedly explains that the 'intelligence network' being used against Hillary Clinton comprises three elements:
'Firstly there were agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party structure itself; secondly Russian emigre and associated offensive cyber operators based in the US; and thirdly, state-sponsored cyber operatives working in Russia.'
The fourth memorandum, dated 19 July, which if accurate means it would have had to have been written before the second, then makes the accusations about the secret meetings between Page and Sechin.
All this stinks of a hastily-organised cover-up operation, set in motion after it became clear that highly compromising material was going to appear on 'WikiLeaks' – but which moved into higher gear after the murder of Rich.
The reference to 'agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party itself' reads as though it might well have been intended to provide a basis for a 'fall-back' position, if either the problems of the 'hacking' story became too glaring, or it became impossible to prevent more information coming out about the role of Rich in supplying material to WikiLeaks.
Also perhaps relevant is the fact that the initial meeting between Carter Page and Stefan Halper occurred at a symposium in Cambridge, UK, entitled '2016's Race to Change the World', which opened on 11 July, the day after Rich's death – and was also attended by Sir Richard Dearlove.
All this adds to the strong impression that panic which may well have been materially increased by Rich's murder could have been one of the reasons why the 'cover-up' took off into a kind of stratosphere of absurdity in the period that followed it.
Reverting to the question you raise of possible motives for the murder, precisely what the panic suggests is indeed that it is not obvious that anyone in the Democratic Party apparatus had any incentive to assassinate Rich.
As was very evident at the time from, for example, comments on the 'MailOnline' site, very many people who disliked Hillary immediately took for granted that Rich had been 'Arkancided', so his death then became further evidence of her innate villainy, and also confirmation that he was, in fact, the source of the 'WikiLeaks' material.
However, precisely because of the sieve-like nature of the Democratic Party apparatus, a situation had been created where there were actually a wide variety of people, in a wide variety of places, who could have been taking an intense interest in the kind of material which appeared on 'WikiLeaks.'
Such people might have been able, through all kinds of routes, to find out a good deal both about what had been leaked, how and why, and what might be leaked in the future.
While I agree that revenge is not the most obvious motive, there are two qualifications. As we have seen with MBS, people can badly misjudge the impact of their actions, which becomes more relevant if one starts casting the net wider in looking for possible suspects. Also, preventing further disclosures could conceivably have been a motive.
Equally, however, it is not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that someone who was well aware of the conclusions people would draw could have seen having Rich murdered as a way of striking at Hillary.
A regrettable consequence of the way in which it has been possible to use atrocity to shape 'narratives', which has been facilitated by the increasingly patent disinterest of the mainstream media in trying to get at the truth, is that there are very many players who, for diverse reasons, could have seen their interests furthered by an assassination of this kind.
How's this for a motive? Imran Awan ran the DNC servers. When it was discovered in May/June that the emails had been downloaded, a search was launched and suspicion fell on Seth. Worried that the Pakistani penetration of the DNC and the Congress might be uncovered, Seth was silenced. I offer this as one possible theory.David Habakkuk -> Publius Tacitus , 2 months agoPT,Pat Lang Mod -> David Habakkuk , 2 months agoI think it is very much a possible theory. And indeed, reading what Mark McCarty and Eric Newhill wrote, I think I may have greatly underestimated the extent to which people on Hillary's side could have thought Seth Rich too dangerous to be left alive.
And I also may not have have given adequate weight to the possibility that a not particularly unnatural fear could have overridden the patent dangers involved in following what I should perhaps have seen as an obvious logic.
One point raised by Eric's comments. It seems to me quite likely that the alarm was in fact raised by monitoring what came in to WikiLeaks, rather than what went out of the DNC. If this was so, however, it would be less likely that the monitoring was done directly by the CIA/NSA. It would be much more likely that this was in the first instance primarily an MI6/GCHQ function.
It may or may not be relevant here that Craig Murray has given a lot of people a lot of grief – not least, in exposing the way that 'loops of lies' about 'SIGINT' were used in the attempt to use the 'false flag' at Ghouta to inveige you and us into another disastrous intervention in the Middle East.
(See https://www.craigmurray.org... .)
Be that as it may, it seems to me a reasonable hypothesis that an enormous amount of effort – including both 'HUMINT' and 'SIGINT' – has been deployed by British intelligence agencies to ensure that all channels by which information could pass to and from Assange are monitored.
Of particular interest could have been the kind of covert means of organising payments which may have been used to transfer money to Seth Rich and his brother.
One might then be some way towards a better explanation of some of the absurd incoherencies in the stories told by and about 'CrowdStrike', which struck a lot of us quite early.
It is perfectly possible that 7 May is the actual date on which the company was called in. However, this would not have been because a problem with the DNC computer systems had been identified by that organisation – but because a receipt of information by 'WikiLeaks' had been identified, and probably by the British.
At that point, it is perfectly possible that Alperovitch et al identified many 'hacks' into the servers, some of which could indeed have been by organisations and individuals which could perfectly possibly be linked to the Russians (but with the fact not being palpable, because these would have looked for 'plausible deniability.')
Quite rapidly, the 'real' investigation, of which that by 'CrowdStrike' could have been a part, but only part, would have identified Rich. But this would only have happened in time for him to stop sending material originating later than 25 May. The search for a 'cover story' would have begun at some time during this period.
The first stage in this would have involved the instruction to leave all laptops in the office on 10 June. Thereafter, the attempts to create a 'cover story' developed rather rapidly.
It would then becomes unsurprising that a former GCHQ person – Matt Tait – should have played an important role, but also that the integration of the different parts of the story was, to put it mildly, imperfect.
Part of this, however, is also likely to have had to do with the fact that both Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele are, quite patently, incompetent.
Unfortunately, I was 'away from base', celebrating a birthday with old friends, with limited internet access, when the Colonel informed us that he had used 'Our Man in Havana' as a teaching aid.
But it has become clear to me that an enormous amount of damage has resulted from the fact that MSM journalists have read too much of the productions of David John Moore Cornwell (aka John Le Carré), and not enough Graham Greene.
I am still trying to think this through, but another Graham Greene novel – 'The Quiet American', of which the films are unfortunately awful, by contrast with that of 'Our Man in Havana' – comes into the picture.
A key point about this is that 'tails wag dogs.'
So, having been persuaded that I had underestimated the likelihood of people in the Hillary camp deciding that they had no realistic option but to remove Seth Rich from the picture, it also occurs to me that a corollary of your suggestion is that a lot of other people – among them, people involved with the Awans not in the United States – might have thought that they had an overriding interest in so doing.
Moreover, they could realistically have calculated that – as with Alden Pyle when General Thé escalates his 'false flags' – those who had thought they were in control would then have had no realistic option but to cover up.
To digress, it seems to me likely that this is the premise on which MBS has operated – and also, that a lot of people have given him every reason to think his confidence was justified.
However, sometimes, when the 'tails' have been able to wag the 'dogs' for a very long time, it goes to their head.
After contemplating the likely intelligence and propaganda efforts of HMG over the last 15 years or so I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little to do with the welfare of Britain. Why? I suppose that the same question can be asked for the US and I have. In re "Our man in Havana" I think there are many issues raised in the work that apply directly to the trade of espionage.David Habakkuk -> Pat Lang , 2 months agoColonel Lang,johnf -> David Habakkuk , 2 months agoThe question why? is a very interesting but also very dispiriting one, but also one which it is quite hard to get one's head round. I hope to have something more coherent to say about it.
Among many reasons, however, there has been a kind of intellectual disintegration.
If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another.
The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.'
Subsequently, of course, he set about colluding in the process. And, sixteen years later, Dearlove is still at it, with 'Russiagate' – and the product being actually accepted much more uncritically by the MSM than it was then.
And that is one of the problems – nobody any longer pays any penalty for failure, or indeed feels any sense of shame about it..
DHEric Newhill -> Publius Tacitus , 2 months agoI agree with this.
There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech.
As the Colonel eloquently asks:
"I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little todo with the welfare of Britain. Why?"
I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion.
They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies. Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome.
(I don't include the Maurice Cowling-ites in this fandango because they strike me as more Little Englanders. Though Peterhouse is of course, shamefully, the HQ of the Henry Jackson Society).
How did the DNC determine that Seth Rich did the download? They killed him on mere suspicion that he could have been the insider stealing data? That seems like an extreme response carried out on mere suspicion. The Awan/Pakistan connection was eventually revealed and it went nowhere; basically fizzled out in the media. On the other hand, if one of our agencies actually knew it was Rich passing info to Wikileaks via a spying program, and that Rich, as a Sanders supporter, was doing so because he harbored deep animosity toward the Clinton campaign and the DNC, then Rich would have to be silenced. This theory would implicate members of the deep state. Perhaps, that is too far fetched or disturbing to consider?Fred S -> Adam Carter , 2 months ago"Accidentally shot" in the back in a city with strict gun control laws at 4 am is rather humorous. How many people are robbed in D.C @ 4am?PBlacque , 2 months agoCan you please clarify one point. You say Guccifer 2.0's DNC emails released in mid June, 2016 contain "meta data" and then that Binney analyzed "data" from an intrusion on July 5, 2016. Clearly Binney couldn't have analyzed Guccifer 2.0's emails meta data (inconsistent timing) ... and could it be that Guccifer's hack was performed at the slower rate expected over the internet? ThanksPublius Tacitus -> PBlacque , 2 months agoBut he went back and analyzed the docs released on 15 June as well. Please focus on the central point--the FBI claims that Guccifer 2.0 is a GRU front but the meta data on the documents don't support the claim that they were obtained via an internet hack.Snow Flake -> Lefty , 2 months agoEllipsis, linguistically? Don't you automatically add what is omitted? ... Russia had (n't) anything ...Lefty -> Snow Flake , 2 months agoGuccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke.
When I turn something I am writing into a non sequitur, or worse reverse its meaning, I call it a f*ck up (linguistically), correct it and thank anyone who cared enough to take the time to read me in the first place and to lend me a hand. What I try not to do is to hide behind a misapplied grammatical device. Know what I mean buttercup... ?Pat Lang Mod -> Lefty , 2 months agoThe NSA's FOIA response that they have traffic involving Rich and Assange reinforces both Assange's assertion and Binney's analysis that the DNC was not hacked, the data was downloaded. Assange's uncategorical denial that the Ruskies did it is important. It deserves to remain unambiguous and not to be subject to uncontrolled ellipsisical seizure.
Guccifer 2.0 seemed pretty earnest. As yet we don't have much of a clue who he was working for.
PT's info is not from a FOIA request.Snow Flake -> Lefty , 2 months agoWhen I turn something .... Know what I mean buttercup... ?No, I am afraid, you are way too sophisticated for me.
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Oct 23, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
If Russia had actually "hacked" the DNC emails then the National Security Agency would have had proof of such activity. In fact, the NSA could have tracked such activity. But they did not do that. That lack of evidence did not prevent a coordinated media campaign from spinning up to pin the blame on Russia for the "theft" and to portray Donald Trump as Putin's lackey and beneficiary.
Any effort to tell an alternative story has met with stout opposition. Fox News, for example, came under withering fire after it published an article in May 2017 claiming that Seth Rich, a young Democrat operative, had leaked DNC emails to Julian Assange at Wikileaks. The family of Seth Rich reacted with fury and sued Fox, Malia Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky, but that suit subsequently was dismissed.
Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange.
While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC.
There is a local angle to the Seth Rich murder story I have not seen discussed. Consider:Eric Newhill , 2 months agoBut the circumstances and facts surrounding the murder were strange. Seth was shot in the back. Nothing was taken from his body -- not his watch, not his wallet and not his credit cards.The story promulgated by the MSM and Wikipedia is that the Washington DC MPD believe the crime was a botched robbery.
But attempted robberies are not normally a unique event. If it was a botched robbery, it seems almost certain that the perpetrator(s) would, having failed in this attempt, try again to execute a robbery.
And use the same MO (modus operandi). But I have seen no reports of other such homicide/robbery combinations. If this was truly a unique event, how would that be possible? Is it really plausible that the perps would kill one person, fail to get anything of value from the homicide, then say "Oh shucks, that didn't work, won't do that again."? There certainly are reports of serial robberies in Washington. Very hard to believe this is an exception.
Yet there is no discussion of this of which I am aware, and the Wikipedia editors controlling the Wikipedia page for the murder of Seth Rich absolutely prohibit discussion, even on their "Talk Page" of such questions. E.g., their deletion of the question I asked here, under the heading "Why the "conspiracy theory" pejorative?" (which resulted in not only being deleted but a "Sanction" against me for daring to ask the question).
PT,Larry McDonald , 2 months agoSo is the theory, more or less, that
- As a Sanders supporter, Rich was appalled by how the DNC screwed Sanders (and maybe some other things he learned also contributed to his decision to engage in espionage against the DNC)
- Rich decides to expose DNC corruption.
- Rich downloads the files locally and then passes them to wikileaks.
- CIA/NSA is already watching wikileaks due to Manning, etc) and "sees' that Rich has passed files.
- Intel filters up to Obama, Brennan, NSA people, Clinton and others that Rich has passed info to Wikileaks and then wikileaks announces and publishes the material.
- The DNC + Obama and other leftist deep staters concoct the Russian hacking meme to distract from the content of the material as well as to begin discredit Trump (and perhaps even develop a means of deposing him should he actually be elected).
- Rich is the wild card. He could confess that he did it all by himself - and he could create a spectacle by explaining why.
- 8. They kill Rich to remove the only serious threat to their nefarious plot....?
"Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange."Publius Tacitus -> Larry McDonald , 2 months agoWhat's your source?
The source is the letter that the lawyer, Ty Clevenger, received from the NSA. I have seen the letter.Pat Lang Mod -> Larry McDonald , 2 months agoYou don't really expect him to tell you, do you?KatieWeddington -> Larry McDonald , 2 months agoLetter has been released. http://lawflog.com/?attachm...Walrus , 2 months agoAnother case of "Arkancide"?jnewman -> Walrus , 2 months agoVince Foster?Pat Lang Mod -> Walrus , 2 months agoThe Serb?amuncat -> Walrus , 2 months agoThere is a connection between Seth and the Pakistani guy who had free rein with a lot of dem congresspeople's computers!!! His protector, Lil Debbie WS!!! There is a Podesta email where he states something to the effect that the person be taught a lesson as an example, guilty or not!
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Oct 25, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
If Russia had actually "hacked" the DNC emails then the National Security Agency would have had proof of such activity. In fact, the NSA could have tracked such activity. But they did not do that. That lack of evidence did not prevent a coordinated media campaign from spinning up to pin the blame on Russia for the "theft" and to portray Donald Trump as Putin's lackey and beneficiary.
Any effort to tell an alternative story has met with stout opposition. Fox News, for example, came under withering fire after it published an article in May 2017 claiming that Seth Rich, a young Democrat operative, had leaked DNC emails to Julian Assange at Wikileaks. The family of Seth Rich reacted with fury and sued Fox, Malia Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky, but that suit subsequently was dismissed.
Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange. While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC.
Another case of "Arkancide"?jnewman -> Walrus , 12 hours agoVince Foster?DianaLC , 13 hours agoPT, thank for the very detailed description of the entire story surrounding the supposed Russian hack of the DNC emails.Snow Flake -> Lefty , 12 hours agoI always find myself screaming at the T.V. whenever a supposed reporter mentions the supposed Russian hack of the DNC computers as if such an event is settled history.
I came to this summary today after I had turned my T.V. off since all the news is now about the "bombs" being mailed to the Clintons and Obamas. (I was afraid a story line would soon continue that the bombs were from Russia via the White House. I can no longer feel certain that anything reported in the "news" is true and wonder what part of it is made up from thin air.
And I am sad that such a huge number of American citizens simply no longer care what is true or what is not true. They believe only what they want to believe. Mostly I am sad that Seth Rich lived and died and few seem to want to know the facts surrounding his death.
Ellipsis, linguistically? Don't you automatically add what is omitted? ... Russia had (n't) anything ...Guccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke.
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Aug 23, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
richardstevenhack , 3 days ago
Pat Lang Mod -> richardstevenhack , 3 days agoOne thing to remember about the FBI is Sy Hersh. Hersh claims the FBI has been sitting on a report for two years that fingers murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich as the Wikileaks DNC email leaker (or one of them, at least.)
Now can we imagine that not everyone in a senior position at the FBI knows about that report? I can't. Literally everyone from the supervisor of the Special Agent or computer forensic investigator who examined Rich's computer right up to the Director HAD to know that report exists - and covered it up.
That right there is obstruction of justice and conspiracy. Literally everyone at the FBI who can't PROVE he didn't know about that report will be going to jail. The entire top administration of the FBI is going to go down.
And how many people at the Department of Justice are aware of that report? Did Rosenstein know? Who else in the Obama administration knew?
That would be motivation for a lot of desperate maneuvering. Add to that who was really behind the Steele Dossier and even more people are likely to end up in jail.
richardstevenhack -> Pat Lang , 3 days agoWhat is the link for Hersh saying that?
Pat Lang Mod -> richardstevenhack , 3 days agoYou haven't heard that yet? It's the infamous audio tape that Hersh was caught on discussing it. He's since obfuscated what he said, but the tape stands on its own, and he has never said that anything he said on the tape wasn't true, despite that a lot of Democrats and Trump-bashers claim he has.
Here's one source on Youtube:
Seymour Hersh discussing Wikileaks DNC leaks Seth Rich & FBI report
richardstevenhack -> Pat Lang , 3 days agoI have told you several times and I will tell you again probably hopelessly that Hersh PERSONALLY has told me that the "tape" was made without his permission or knowledge when he was aimlessly speculating on possibilities.
Pat Lang Mod -> richardstevenhack , 3 days agoI am unaware of your explicitly telling me that he personally told you that the tape was "aimless speculation." My apologies if I missed that response.
Of course the tape was made without his permission. We all know that. It's irrelevant to what he said on the tape.
What I'm saying is that despite what he may have told you, nothing on that tape sounds like "aimless speculation".
When you consider that he has four good reasons for dissembling about the tape, I view it as far more likely that everything he said was true.
1) If what he said is true, he may have compromised his FBI contact. Not good for his line of work.
2) If what he said is true, compromising that contact may well make all his other contacts wary about talking to him in the future - a bad deal for a journalist who relies on his contacts.
3) If what he said is true, he may have compromised his ability to get his "long form journalism" article published - a problem he already has had in the past.
4) If what he said is true, he's accusing the FBI of sitting on that report for two years, which might well make him a target of retaliation in some way.
If you believe that everything he said on the tape is untrue and that is what he explicitly told you, fine. I'm waiting for his "long form journalism" report to explain it. So far everything he has said publicly about it has not contradicted what he said on the tape, but merely waved his hands about it.
Aukuu Makule -> Pat Lang , 3 days agoSy Hersh talks a lot both loudly and profanely. He never intended to tell Buttowski that there was more than a possibility that the FBI held more than a rumor that this might be true. He talked to Buttowski because a mutual friend of him and me asked him to do so for no good reason. Please go talk to all the other people you pester and not on SST. You are an argumentative nuisance.
I have no stake in the debate about Rich, DNC, wikileaks.
But I do notice some loose ends. Hersh may well have engaged in speculation, but it is interesting speculation:
quote:
55. During his conversation with Butowsky, Mr. Hersh claimed that he had received information from an "FBI report." Mr. Hersh had not seen the report himself, but explained: "I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. And I know this person is unbelievably accurate and careful. He's a very high level guy."56. According to Mr. Hersh, his source told him that the FBI report states that, shortly after Seth Rich's murder, the D.C. police obtained a warrant to search his home. When they arrived at the home, the D.C. police found Seth Rich's computer, but were unable to access it.The computer was then provided to the D.C. police Cyber Unit, who also were unable to access the computer. At that point, the D.C. police contacted the Cyber Unit at the FBI's Washington D.C. field office. Again, according to the supposed FBI report, the Washington D.C. field office was able to get into the computer and found that in "late spring early summer [2016], [Seth Rich][made] contact with Wikileaks." "They found what he had done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails. Some juicy emails from the DNC." Mr. Hersh told Butowsky that Seth Rich "offered a sample [to WikiLeaks][,] an extensive sample, you know I'm sure dozens, of emails, and said I want money."
. . .
"I hear gossip," Hersh tells NPR on Monday. "[Butowsky] took two and two and made 45 out of it."
. . .
The clip is definitely worth listening to in its entirety if you haven't already. Hersh is heard telling Butowsky that he had a high-level insider read him an FBI file confirming that Seth Rich was known to have been in contact with WikiLeaks prior to his death, which is not even a tiny bit remotely the same as having "heard rumors". Hersh's statements in the audio recording and his statement to NPR cannot both be true.
endquote
https://medium.com/@caityjo...
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Jul 03, 2018 | www.unz.com
Carlton Meyer , Website July 2, 2018 at 4:36 am GMT
And it goes on today. Just over a year ago, Wikileaks source Seth Rich was assassinated. Fox News and lefty Jimmy Dore reported this, until the Deep State put the screws on and they both retracted with bogus stories to "correct" their errors. No one talks about this anymore.
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Jun 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Vote up! 8 Vote down! 1
Ms No -> el buitre Fri, 06/15/2018 - 15:40 Permalink
forexskin -> Ms No Fri, 06/15/2018 - 16:26 PermalinkFound an interesting article about some developments with Seth Rich. Hard to make sense of. I noticed the DNC created a tiny plaque above a crappy bike rack for him. They don't want anybody to remember him. Probably Hillary's idea.
https://www.sott.net/article/388293-Aaron-Rich-refusing-to-authorize-Wi
Thought Processor -> Ms No Fri, 06/15/2018 - 16:30 Permalinkthis article merits wider play - interesting angle that the family won't authorize wikileaks to release their info.
Thought Processor -> Four chan Fri, 06/15/2018 - 15:26 Permalink
Seth uploaded the files into a DropBox (per Sy Hersh) and also may have given others the password to it. He was trying to make sure that the information got out. He very likely also asked that he never be named as the leaker, for obvious reasons.
His family could possibly confirm that he was the leaker if they knew at the time, though I'm sure that they were heavily pressured to do otherwise as soon as Seth Rich was murdered. They would have simply been given a choice along with some thinly veiled threats.
pparalegal -> Thought Processor Fri, 06/15/2018 - 16:51 Permalink
Rumor is that Bernie is setting up his crew now for another run at it. Makes me wonder who the next Seth Rich will be.
Bernie sold his mooing cow followers out last time. The DNC will make him an offer he can't refuse. Biden is a tit grabbing corrupt cartoon. I say Crusty the clown has a good chance. Do it for the children!
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Mar 25, 2018 | www.thegatewaypundit.com
Mar 21, 2018 attacked outside of his home by a masked man in January.As reported by The Gateway Pundit 's Jim Hoft, 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich was murdered in Washington DC on July 10, 2016, roughly one block from his apartment. The suspects took nothing from Rich, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone. The murder has gone unsolved to this day.
Burkman sued the Democratic National Committee for the release of the hacked DNC server he claimed will reveal key information in solving the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
The Washington Examiner reported
We have reached out to Mr. Burkman and will post any updates as we receive themLobbyist Jack Burkman, who began a private investigation into the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich last year, says he was nearly killed after a man who joined the investigation attempted to murder him last week, according to a report.
"It's a horror story," Burkman told the Washington Post Monday.
Kevin Doherty, 46, shot Burkman multiple times and ran him over with an SUV, according to the Post
Tension reportedly developed between the two as Doherty began to think the profiling project was his and began speaking to reporters without Burkman's consent, Burkman told the Post.
Burkman fired Doherty and sent him a cease-and-desist letter in July, according to the news outlet. "I just figured the matter was closed," Burkman told the Post. "But what happened is, I guess, he was simmering and simmering and simmering."
A source who identified as a senior FBI official contacted Burkman and claimed to have internal documents relative to another case he was working on.
The anonymous source planted envelopes of information under a traffic cone in the parking garage at the Key Bridge Marriott in Rosslyn, according to Burkman.
As the lobbyist arrived to retrieve the documents, with his pet Dachshund in hand, he reached under the cone and was shot in the buttocks and thigh and run over by an SUV.
Burkman spent three days in the hospital, and his dog was not harmed.
Doherty was charged with use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and two counts of malicious wounding. He is currently jailed in the Arlington County Detention Facility.
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Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Fred , 09 March 2018 at 05:23 PM
Intereseting that a former staffer from Senator Feinstein is implicated in the mess. How many others are there who have been doing the same thing? I wonder if Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultt's IT staffer Mr. Arwan was accessing any relavent iformation while he was on her payroll and for whom?Seamus Padraig said in reply to Fred ... , 09 March 2018 at 06:36 PMYou wanna hear another hot tip? Debbie's brother, Steven Wasserman, is the Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia -- the very jurisdiction where Seth Rich was murdered. Not much progress being made in that investigation ... can't imagine why!rg -> Fred ... , 09 March 2018 at 10:27 PMInteresting comment. Maybe he was the DNC hacker/leaker.
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Mar 09, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
PeacefulProsperity | Mar 8, 2018 10:35:35 PM | 38
BTW The Clinton Body Count increases again:
" FBI Special Agent David Raynor was suicided yesterday while he was investigating why former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met this past June (2017) with Baltimore Police Department Detective Sean Suiter -- who was a member of the wildly corrupt Baltimore police unit called the Gun Trace Task Force linked to the "Operation Fast and Furious" gun scandal covered up the Obama regime -- but with Detective Suiter being murdered with his own gun on 15 November (2017) the day before he was due to testify before a US Federal Grand Jury..."
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Mar 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Wed, 03/07/2018 - 14:55 434 SHARES
Shortly after WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on July 26, 2016, former UK spy Christopher Steele filed a memo with his employer, Fusion GPS, claiming that the DNC "hack" during the 2016 election involved Russian agents "within the Democratic Party structure itself ," The New Yorker reports.
On July 26, 2016, after WikiLeaks disseminated the D.N.C. e-mails, Steele filed yet another memo, this time claiming that the Kremlin was "behind" the hacking, which was part of a Russian cyber war against Hillary Clinton's campaign. Many of the details seemed far-fetched: Steele's sources claimed that the digital attack involved agents "within the Democratic Party structure itself," as well as Russian émigrés in the U.S. and "associated offensive cyber operators."
The unverified claim was contained within a multitude of memos compiled by Steele on behalf of Fusion GPS, which was conducting opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump for Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
Of note, the 35-page "Trump-Russia" dossier used in part by the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant on one-time Trump campaign advisor Carter Page was comprised of seventeen of Steele's memos - including one which alleged that Trump had paid "a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him," which would defile a bed that Barack and Michelle Obama had slept in during a state visit - an allegation attributed to four individuals' second-hand reporting.
The shocking claim comes amid recent reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing criminal charges against Russian hackers allegedly behind the breaches of both the DNC and John Podesta's email.
NBC News reports:
Much like the indictment Mueller filed last month charging a different group of Russians in a social media trolling and illegal-ad-buying scheme, the possible new charges are expected to rely heavily on secret intelligence gathered by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), several of the officials say. [ ] Mueller's consideration of charges accusing Russians in the hacking case has not been reported previously . Sources say he has long had sufficient evidence to make a case, but strategic issues could dictate the timing. Potential charges include violations of statutes on conspiracy, election law as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The sources say the possible new indictment -- or more than one, if that's how Mueller's office decides to proceed -- would delve into the details of, and the people behind, the Russian intelligence operation that used hackers to penetrate computer networks and steal emails of both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Meanwhile, as we have been reporting, Mueller has yet to even reach out to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, or New Zealand entrepreneur Kim Dotcom - who clearly knew of the upcoming email leaks before they were dropped. While Assange has heavily insinuated it was DNC staffer Seth Rich, Dotcom has gone "all in" over the last few months - tweeting that he knows Seth Rich was Wikileaks' source, Rich used a memory stick, and that Dotcom himself was involved.
As Josh Caplan of TGP notes, In Donna Brazile's book, "Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House," the Democrat operative admits the DNC allowed alleged Russian hackers to steal data from the party's servers. From the Daily Caller :
Donna Brazile says in her new book the Democratic National Committee (DNC) went against professional advice and sat idly for a month while Russians stole data because primaries were still underway in a number of states.
In May, when CrowdStrike recommended that we take down our system and rebuild it, the DNC told them to wait a month, because the state primaries for the presidential election were still underway , and the party and the staff needed to be at their computers to manage these efforts," Brazile wrote in her new book , " Hacks ."
"For a whole month, CrowdStrike watched Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear operating. Cozy Bear was the hacking force that had been in the DNC system for nearly a year."
Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear are cybersecurity firms that have reported ties with Russian hackers. Both groups are blamed for the hacks on the DNC in 2016. CrowdStrike is a private U.S. cybersecurity firm that oversaw the protection of the DNC's servers.
Nothing to see here folks - just Trump's enemies using Steele's unverified memos with info from high level Kremlin officials when it benefits them, while ignoring the ones which suggest "insiders" was involved in the DNC hack. Tags Politics Entertainment Production - NEC Application Software
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Chupacabra-322 Wed, 03/07/2018 - 09:28 Permalink
Killtruck -> Chupacabra-322 Wed, 03/07/2018 - 09:28 PermalinkIt wasn't a "Hack." It was a LEAK. And, his name was #SethRich. Control the Language, Control the Narratives.
BaBaBouy -> AlaricBalth Wed, 03/07/2018 - 09:33 PermalinkSeth Rich was a Russian agent? Does that mean we can investigate his murder now? Somebody call that British Boris to throw a hissyfit, and maybe JUST MAYBE we can take a second look...
Jim in MN -> BaBaBouy Wed, 03/07/2018 - 10:01 PermalinkDID they find SETH's Russian Passport Yet ? ? ?
HenryKissinger -> Jim in MN Wed, 03/07/2018 - 10:04 PermalinkHmm.....Friend of Panda....Fancy Bear....it's all starting to MAKE SENSE .....not..... The Obama and Clinton (and McCain) dorks botched a coup attempt, have the world's sloppiest coverup underway, and they will pay.
???ö? -> HenryKissinger Wed, 03/07/2018 - 10:27 PermalinkSeth Rich was RUSSIAN? because Kim Dotcom was German until he had to hide from the USA.
pods -> ???ö? Wed, 03/07/2018 - 10:35 PermalinkMueller would indict a bowl of borscht soup. Nevermind that British MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, hacked the US Election. Nevermind that DNC email leaker Seth Rich was asassinated by British MI6 spies. Nevermind that Assange is held captive by British MI6 spies.
I am sooooo tired of this Russian hacking, collusion, meddling bullshit. They are just not going to stop until we are trading missiles with Russia. Then they will say that they were right all along, when in fact they started the damn thing.
And why is ANYONE listening to this lying SOB Steele? Man the media disgusts me in this country. I wish I could find a way to consume less of their product, but I already have no TV, turn off the radio news in a heartbeat when I hear it come on, and visit none of their websites.
pods
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Jul 11, 2016 | forward.com
Ari Feldman , Jul 11, 2016
As Hofkin mourned the loss of 27-year-old Rich, he saw a powerful meaning in the illicit cookouts: Even though Rich was not particularly observant, he wanted to make sure that his more observant friends could enjoy the salami, steak and kebabs with him.
That respect for others' beliefs combined with the can-do spirit made Rich a natural leader -- and a serious politics geek.
"He was a totally unassuming intellectual who knew very early on that he wanted go into politics," said Jacob Cytryn, the director of Camp Ramah. "He wanted to get stuff done."
Rich's life was cut short early that Sunday morning, when an unknown assailant shot him four times, including at least once in the back.
The idealistic young man from Omaha, Nebraska, was on his way home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, a small community near Howard University that has seen a rise in crime this year . Police heard the gunshots and arrived on the scene to find Rich conscious and breathing, but he died of his injuries after being taken to a local hospital.
The motive for the shooting is still unclear. Rich's father, Joel Rich, thought that it might have been a botched robbery attempt. The shooter remains at large, and the investigation into the shooting is ongoing. The police are offering a $25,000 reward for information on the case.
Growing memorial on the corner where #SethConradRich was murdered. Neighbors paying their respects. pic.twitter.com/yHTeKopxv7 -- Van Applegate (@VBagate) July 11, 2016
For friends and family it was a shocking end to a short life of extraordinary promise.
Rich grew up in a tight-knit and relatively modest Jewish community in Omaha. Rabbi Paul Drazen, who knew Rich when he was a young boy still preparing for his bar mitzvah, said he always knew Rich would go far.
"He was a young man who had dreams, and, frankly, he pursued them," Drazen said "He really, really pushed hard to be all he could be."
Drazen credited Rich's parents with teaching him the importance of caring for others -- in words and deeds. When they would visit their son at summer camp, Drazen said, they wouldn't just bring treats for Rich's cabin -- they would bring food enough for his whole eidah , or age group.
"That was the kind of lesson they taught through the way they lived," Drazen said. "And they still live that way."
Rabbi Steven Abraham, the current spiritual leader of Rich's hometown synagogue, Beth El Synagogue, said that Rich was always actively engaged in a wide range of Jewish organizations.
"Seth was involved in USY [United Synagogue Youth], he was involved in Ramah, he went to the community Jewish day school," he said. "The kid was a mensch."
Joel Rich is the immediate past president of their synagogue. His grandparents were founding members.
"This is a family that is entrenched in our Jewish community," Abraham said.
Rich brought creativity and initiative to his experience at camp, especially during his summer as the director of boating education in 2011, a year after graduating from Creighton University in Omaha.
"He was exceptionally thoughtful, very engaged, in his own way, in his Jewish identity," Cytryn said. "And he loved roofball."
He had always been drawn to the world of politics: In high school he was a member of the student democrats club, and at Creighton, where he majored in political science, he served two terms as a representative on the student government.
After his summer as the director of boating at Camp Ramah, Rich moved to Washington, where he held jobs in the office of the Nebraska senator Ben Nelson and at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a major polling and consulting firm, before going to work for the Democratic National Committee.
Seth Rich was only two years into his job as the voter expansion data director working for the DNC, where he helped boost turnout by connecting voters with resources like polling place locations.
But it was clear that he had even bigger goals.
"In this business, people cycle in and out, but not him," said James Green , a campaign director who gave Rich one of his first jobs in politics. "He was going to be a rising star."
Since the news of Rich's killing broke, many of his friends and co-workers have taken to social media to mourn his loss.
Seth Rich was one of the good guys. https://t.co/Ltt5qzQEUA -- Jon Adam Ross (@jonadamross) July 11, 2016
Seth Rich was a great guy. Warm, funny, happy, extremely talented and creative. May his memory be a blessing. https://t.co/z8EdxOhZu6 -- Henry J. Bernstein (@gonzo3249) July 11, 2016
Heartbreaking to hear about the loss of friend and former coworker Seth Rich. https://t.co/0aQutTIjKA https://t.co/ramhV9mYTG -- Ruth Igielnik (@RuthIgielnik) July 11, 2016
"Add him to the roll of justice," wrote Democratic stalwart Donna Brazile.
Remember his name and add him to the rolls of justice. #SethConradRich . He lived to make a difference. He believed in voting rights. -- Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) July 11, 2016
At a speech on gun reform on Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spoke of Rich's death . Tragedies like these, she said, "tear at our soul."
"Seth Rich was a dedicated, selfless public servant who worked tirelessly to protect the most sacred right we share as Americans -- the right to vote," said Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chair of the DNC, in a statement released after Rich's death.
"He was a joy to have as a member of our team, and his talents, intelligence and enthusiasm will be deeply missed by many friends, colleagues and coworkers who worked by his side in service to the highest ideals of our democracy."
Around the office Rich was known for combining a strong work ethic with ample lightheartedness. He often pulled out his famous panda sweatshirt and wore it around the office, just to make his coworkers smile, his mother, Mary Ann Rich, told WOWT News .
"Will I forever miss him, yes. But I have to remember the happy times too to get through the tears," she said.
"He worked hard and he wanted to make a difference and unfortunately now there is someone who could have made a difference who isn't going to be there," his father, Joel, said.
Seth Rich's last Facebook post is a final symbol of his dedication to the ideals his parents instilled in him.
As accounts of the shootings of Dallas police officers spread, Rich made an emotional plea on Facebook for people to end the violence.
"I have family and friends on both sides of the law," he wrote. "Please, stop killing each other."
Seth Rich's last Facebook post, in response to the series of shootings last week.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman .
Read more: https://forward.com/news/national/344781/for-seth-rich-passion-for-service-started-with-kosher-cookouts-at-camp-rama/
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Mar 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
just the tip Fri, 03/02/2018 - 21:35 Permalink
Anunnaki -> just the tip Fri, 03/02/2018 - 21:45 Permalinkwow.
if anyone has any doubts about how deep and wide the swamp is, they only need to read about seth's brother aaron.
a northrup grumman employee?
Wheeler also claimed in recently leaked audio that Seth Rich's brother, Aaron – a Northrup Grumman employee, blocked him from looking at Seth's computer and stonewalled his investigation.
Wheeler said that brother Aaron Rich tried to block Wheeler from looking at Seth's computer, even though there could be evidence on it. "He said no, he said I have his computer, meaning him," Wheeler said. "I said, well can I look at it? He said, what are you looking for? I said anything that could indicate if Seth was having problems with someone. He said no, I already checked it. Don't worry about it."
Aaron also blocked Wheeler from finding out about who was at a party Seth attended the night of the murder.
"All I want you to do is work on the botched robbery theory and that's it," Aaron told Wheeler - Big League Politics
Richard Whitney Fri, 03/02/2018 - 22:19 PermalinkOne of the Awan brothers was at the same party, stalked Seth on his walk home and botched the hit. Seth was alive in Howard Univ. Hospital and was murdered in his bed after being moved to the private hospital
Loretta Lynch - some of you know her as Elizabeth Carlisle - told WJC on the tarmac that it was Seth Rich. A procedure known as Arkancide then ensued.
Wikileaks offered a reward for information leading to the killers of Seth Rich. Did the DNC do anything? No.
Rich was killed by two members of MS-13, who were subsequently liquidated for their efforts.
Remember when President Trump referred to MS-13 in the SOTU? And then some undereducated water buffalo on CNN complained to the effect that "No one outside of Fox News knows about this obscure gang?" Well, Trump wasn't making some random verbal gesture. That was a signal that he knows, and serious investigators know, about Rich's murder and the DNC.
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Mar 02, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
As rumors swirl that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing a case against Russians who are alleged to have hacked Democrats during the 2016 election -- a conclusion based solely on the analysis of cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, a Friday op-ed in the Washington Times by retired U.S. Navy admiral James A. Lyons, Jr. asks a simple, yet monumentally significant question: Why haven't Congressional Investigators or Special Counsel Robert Mueller addressed the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich - who multiple people have claimed was Wikileaks' source of emails leaked during the 2016 U.S. presidential election?
Mueller has been incredibly thorough in his ongoing investigations -- however he won't even respond to Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand entrepreneur who clearly knew about the hacked emails long before they were released, claims that Seth Rich obtained them with a memory stick , and has offered to provide proof to the Special Counsel investigation.
On May 18, 2017, Dotcom proposed that if Congress includes the Seth Rich investigation in their Russia probe, he would provide written testimony with evidence that Seth Rich was WikiLeaks' source.
In addition to several odd facts surrounding Rich's still unsolved murder - which officials have deemed a "botched robbery," forensic technical evidence has emerged which contradicts the Crowdstrike report. The Irvine, CA company partially funded by Google , was the only entity allowed to analyze the DNC servers in relation to claims of election hacking:
Notably, Crowdstrike has been considered by many to be discredited over their revision and retraction of a report over Russian hacking of Ukrainian military equipment - a report which the government of Ukraine said was fake news.
In connection with the emergence in some media reports which stated that the alleged "80% howitzer D-30 Armed Forces of Ukraine removed through scrapping Russian Ukrainian hackers software gunners," Land Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine informs that the said information is incorrect .
Ministry of Defence of Ukraine asks journalists to publish only verified information received from the competent official sources. Spreading false information leads to increased social tension in society and undermines public confidence in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. –mil.gov.ua (translated) (1.6.2017)
In fact, several respected journalists have cast serious doubt on CrowdStrike's report on the DNC servers:
- How To Get To "Reasonable Certainty" on a Russia Finding – Jeffrey Carr, Medium (12.13.2016)
- HERE'S THE PUBLIC EVIDENCE RUSSIA HACKED THE DNC -- IT'S NOT ENOUGH – Sam Biddle, The Intercept (12.14.2016)
Pay attention, because Mueller is likely to use the Crowdstrike report to support the rumored upcoming charges against Russian hackers.
Also notable is that Crowdstrike founder and anti-Putin Russian expat Dimitri Alperovitch sits on the Atlantic Council - which is funded by the US State Department, NATO, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukranian Oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Who else is on the Atlantic Council? Evelyn Farkas - who slipped up during an MSNBC interview with Mika Brzezinski and disclosed that the Obama administration had been spying on the Trump campaign:
The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods , meaning we would not longer have access to that intelligence. - Evelyn Farkas
Odd facts surrounding the murder of Seth Rich
"The facts that we know of in the murder of the DNC staffer, Seth Rich, was that he was gunned down blocks from his home on July 10, 2016. Washington Metro police detectives claim that Mr. Rich was a robbery victim, which is strange since after being shot twice in the back, he was still wearing a $2,000 gold necklace and watch. He still had his wallet, key and phone. Clearly, he was not a victim of robbery, " writes Lyons.
Another unexplained fact muddying the Rich case is that of a stolen 40 caliber Glock 22 handguns stolen from an FBI agent's car the same day Rich was murdered. D.C. Metro police said that the theft occurred between 5 and 7 a.m., while the FBI said two weeks later that the theft had occurred between Midnight and 2 a.m. - fueling speculation that the FBI gun was used in Rich's murder.
Furthermore, two men working with the Rich family - private investigator and former D.C. Police detective Rod Wheeler and family acquaintance Ed Butowsky, have previously stated that Rich had contacts with WikiLeaks before his death.
"According to Ed Butowsky, an acquaintance of the family, in his discussions with Joel and Mary Rich, they confirmed that their son transmitted the DNC emails to Wikileaks ," writes Lyons.
While Wheeler initially told TV station Fox5 that proof of Rich's contact with WikiLeaks lies on the murdered IT staffer's laptop, he later walked the claim back - though he maintained that there was "some communication between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks."
Wheeler also claimed in recently leaked audio that Seth Rich's brother, Aaron – a Northrup Grumman employee, blocked him from looking at Seth's computer and stonewalled his investigation.
Wheeler said that brother Aaron Rich tried to block Wheeler from looking at Seth's computer, even though there could be evidence on it. "He said no, he said I have his computer, meaning him," Wheeler said. "I said, well can I look at it? He said, what are you looking for? I said anything that could indicate if Seth was having problems with someone. He said no, I already checked it. Don't worry about it."
Aaron also blocked Wheeler from finding out about who was at a party Seth attended the night of the murder.
"All I want you to do is work on the botched robbery theory and that's it," Aaron told Wheeler - Big League Politics
Perhaps the most stunning audio evidence, however, comes from leaked audio of a recorded conversation between Ed Butowsky and Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who told him of a " purported FBI report establishing that Seth Rich sent emails to WikiLeaks ."
As transcribed and exclusively reported on by journalist Cassandra Fairbanks last year:
What the report says is that some time in late Spring he makes contact with WikiLeaks, that's in his computer," he says. " Anyway, they found what he had done is that he had submitted a series of documents -- of emails, of juicy emails, from the DNC."
Hersh explains that it was unclear how the negotiations went, but that WikiLeaks did obtain access to a password protected DropBox where Rich had put the files.
" All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I'm sure dozens of emails, and said 'I want money.' Later, WikiLeaks did get the password, he had a DropBox, a protected DropBox," he said. They got access to the DropBox."
Hersh also states that Rich had concerns about something happening to him, and had
"The word was passed, according to the NSA report, he also shared this DropBox with a couple of friends, so that 'if anything happens to me it's not going to solve your problems,'" he added. "WikiLeaks got access before he was killed."
Brennan and Russian disinformation
Hersh also told Butowsky that the DNC made up the Russian hacking story as a disinformation campaign – directly pointing a finger at former CIA director (and now MSNBC/NBC contributor ) John Brennan as the architect.
I have a narrative of how that whole f*cking thing began. It's a Brennan operation, it was an American disinformation , and the fu*kin' President, at one point, they even started telling the press – they were backfeeding the Press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, fu*king c*cksucker Rogers, was telling the press that we even know who in the Russian military intelligence service leaked it.
Listen to Seymour Hersh leaked audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/giuZdBAXVh0
(full transcription here and extended audio of the Hersh conversation here )
Hersh denied that he told Butowsky anything before the leaked audio emerged , telling NPR " I hear gossip [Butowsky] took two and two and made 45 out of it. "
Technical Evidence
As we mentioned last week, Dotcom's assertion is backed up by an analysis done last year by a researcher who goes by the name Forensicator , who determined that the DNC files were copied at 22.6 MB/s - a speed virtually impossible to achieve from halfway around the world, much less over a local network - yet a speed typical of file transfers to a memory stick.
The big hint
Last but not least, let's not forget that Julian Assange heavily implied Seth Rich was a source:
Given that a) the Russian hacking narrative hinges on Crowdstrikes's questionable reporting , and b) a mountain of evidence pointing to Seth Rich as the source of the leaked emails - it stands to reason that Congressional investigators and Special Counsel Robert Mueller should at minimum explore these leads.
As retired U.S. Navy admiral James A. Lyons, Jr. asks: why aren't they?
macholatte PermalinkSomething all of us here already know, if Mueller gets away from the delusion of Trump-Russia collusion then it will be his ass in the frying pan. So he won't go after the Clintons, Obama, Comey or anyone else. Hitlery could show up with a gun in her hand and tell Mueller she shot Seth and he would ignore it.
And, sadly, there ain't nobody gonna do anything about it unless and until a Special Prosecutor from outside DC is hired. Right now a snowball in hell has a better chance.
Corruption!
It's what's for breakfast!– Rod Sessions
NumberNone -> hedgeless_horseman Permalink
Why don't the Democrats scream about the exploitation of his murder against them like they do with every minor accusation? It's as if they want his death to disappear from the public view...wonder why?
Theosebes Goodfellow -> WTFRLY Permalink
I think it is mostly because they know so much of their world hangs in the secrecy. If they let the Seth Rich story get out, the Uranium One story gets out. If the Uranium One story gets out, the Awans' stolen cars with diplomatic cover for guns to Syria in return for heroin to America comes out. If that story comes out, then the ISI Pakistani doctors with fake medical degrees pushing pharma opiods in America comes out. And finally, Pizzagate, Pedogate, call it what you want, it comes out too. And then all of these dirty sons of bitches go to jail.
And that's why you aren't hearing any of it. Especially from Mueller. I think he got hoodwinked too. They sold him this job as a slam dunk to get Trump out of the White House. It really is the shits when the best laid plans of mice go south.
One of Trumps big problems is that as an outsider he did not have people both qualified and loyal to appoint to critical offices in the deep state. That is why he wound up with a cipher like Sessions, a guy naive and gullible enough to believe the justice department was filled with honorable and trustworthy people or at least men who played by some set of rules. Having found out the hard way that he screwed up Trump is groping for a way out, trying to use a knife in a gun fight. The other side is too ruthless and i suspect they will take him down in the end.
SlothB77 Yars Revenge Permalink
"All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I'm sure dozens of emails, and said 'I want money.' Later, WikiLeaks did get the password, he had a DropBox, a protected DropBox," he said. They got access to the DropBox."
Why has no one followed the money on this yet? This introduces an interesting angle - did Seth Rich get paid by WikiLeaks? And if so, can we find evidence of the payoff? How did he afford his expensive watch and necklace?
Dems voters and liberals are silent on all this or really just pushing the Russian and Putin narrative.
Blankenstein RopeADope Permalink
Report a crime, yet don't allow law enforcement access to evidence to help them solve the case.
Sounds like a case in Illinois. A 1 1/2 year old went missing, yet the parent wouldn't let the authorities search the house. I don't remember if there was a warrant or what finally happened that the police were allowed to search the home, but they did, and found the baby, dead, under the sofa.
hedgeless_horseman z530 Permalink
The case is being tried on CNN and in the NYT. It was never intended to go to court.
Withdrawn Sanction z530 Permalink
The other key is Rod Rosenstein's post-indictment presser. At the very end, he gave away the game by admitting there was no collusion, no Americans were involved, and nothing allegedly done by the Russians affected the election's outcome. BOOM. Stick a fork in Mueller's ham sandwich indictment.
Without that bit of truth, Mueller can go after people for other crimes but not for what he was mandated to do.
The one bit of evidence that pushes me over from the possible to probably is the gun, what are the odds of this gun being stolen from the FBI, not just some random joe, but the FBI themselves. If that was the same gun used in the murder than the odds of it happening to turn up immediately in a robbery where nothing was stolen in an area where no one commits crimes is so small as to be near zero. It is vague above, what do ballistics say?
If Trump really wants to drain his swamp then this would be the way in, however if they did murder Seth then they'll murder Trump's family too so he is neutralized unless they can go in and get everyone involved in one go. Otherwise I'd expect the job to be handed over to someone ready to die, thinking here a retired general/admiral with no family might be the one to do it.
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Feb 20, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , February 19, 2018 at 5:59 pm
Bob Van Noy , February 19, 2018 at 7:18 pmRelated news: Kim Dotcom: "Let Me Assure You, The DNC Hack Wasn't Even A Hack", https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-18/kim-dotcom-let-me-assure-you-dnc-hack-wasnt-even-hack (Kim Dot Com claims personal knowledge on who took the DNC emails (Seth Rich) and his lawyers wrote to Mueller twice, offering his testimony, but never heard back from Mueller).
Stop Bush and Clinton , February 19, 2018 at 7:34 pmThank you Paul E. Merrell, J.D. I have been convinced from the beginning of all of this that this was the line to Wikileaks. Now if we could only get a real investigation into Seth's murder.
"We found that they broke a vast number of laws, did surveillance of a competitor with a warrant based on fake evidence, all adding up to treason worse than Watergate. But we think that no reasonable prosecutor would file charges .." -- The FBI
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Feb 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Vanmac Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:43 Permalink
whosyerdaddy Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:44 PermalinkThis whole thing hangs on the murder of Seth Rich. The Dossier and the Intelligence Assessment are fundamentally rooted to Trump and Russians hacking the DNC and using WikiLeaks to ruin Hillary Clinton. Without the DNC "hack" there is nothing to Russia's interference in the election or any Trump collusion. Seth Rich is the Redline.
Hannity and CTH can go on and on about all of this but, not Seth Rich.
Mention Seth Rich and get your chain yanked. Everything now reflects a Limited Hangout. They've been caught, and they're cutting their losses. What will "they" do to keep Seth Rich's real killers hidden forever from public view?
You folks are missing the point. Mueller has been at this for 9 months. He has come up with basically nothing, nada, zip, zilch. To make himself and Rosie look better they indict the evil Rooskies and say "aha I told you there was something there". It is a punt and a fairly transparent one.
The cases against Manafort and Flynn will be dropped for prosecutorial malfeasance, withholding of evidence, flawed FISA warrants etc.
It tells me there is no case against not only Trump but also no case against any higher ups in either the campaign or the administration. It is a way of saving face for Mueller and Rosenstein but they may have their own worries soon enough or perhaps a deal has already been made.
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Feb 15, 2018 | theduran.com
Joe Rogan and Jimmy Dore talk about the shady history of Hilary Clinton, and how Set Rich's murder may very well be attributed to Hillary and the DNC.
From the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast
Click here for the best news on Russia >>Rogan and Dore discuss Obama's corruption and how Hillary Clinton was not the lesser of two evils, just pure evil.
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Feb 04, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Vote up! 0 Vote down! 0 dot_bust Feb 3, 2018 12:33 PM Permalink
hooligan2009 -> dot_bust Feb 3, 2018 1:57 PM PermalinkI'm wondering where Seth Rich fits into the whole scenario.
Did he discover the Hillary/DNC plot? Was he going to leak that information? I'm not sure if the timeline surrounding his death fits, but I'm curious about it.
Can someone here add some clarification on this hypothesis?
long winded, but you could start here for some lite bg reading on the events of the summer of 2016:
July 10, 2016 : DNC staffer Seth Rich, whose title is reported as "voter expansion data director," is murdered in the street near his home in Washington, DC. The police will attribute his murder to robbery, although nothing was stolen from Rich. His murder remains unsolved.
Here, thanks to William Craddick of Disobedient Media , is the crime report, which tells us that three of the officers at the scene were wearing body cams.
http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3559/A-Seth-Rich-Chronology-
one of the awan brothers (of "all congress software and hardware belong to us" fame) has been implicated also.
http://yournewswire.com/imran-awan-seth-rich/
" I mran Awan, the former DNC staffer who was arrested this week while trying to flee the United States, was with Seth Rich the night of his murder, according to new photographic evidence.
Police who originally investigated the murder suggested that Seth Rich might have been killed by someone he knew, due to the lack of struggle. The killer also took nothing from the victim, leaving behind his wallet containing $2000, watch and phone.
The photo, which directly links Imran Awan to Seth Rich, also links Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Awan's former employer, to the former Seth Rich's death.
there's bunches more available via your favorite search engine, but that might pique your curiosity.
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Jan 12, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Richardstevenhack 12 January 2018 at 12:51 PM
And now we have this...Mueller adds DOJ cybercrime prosecutor to his team
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/10/russia-special-counsel-mueller-adds-cybercrime-prosecutor-276499Quote:
If any of Trump's associates knew about and encouraged the hacking of Democrats' emails and computer servers, they could be charged under the statute.
In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mueller's team was letting the original DOJ prosecutors retain the investigation of the actual cyber intrusions into the DNC and other targets.
End Quote
This is beyond ridiculous.
The FBI never investigated the DNC servers because they decided to accept CrowdStrike's analysis despite CrowdStrike being run by a Russian ex-pat who hates Russia and sees Russians under every bed. Now they want to try to accuse Trump associates of "hacking"? Seriously?
Second, according to Seymour Hersh, the FBI is sitting on a report that explicitly fingers murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich as the source for the DNC emails received by Wikileaks.
These two facts - along with the compromised FBI personnel involved in the Fusion GPS scandal - demonstrate that the FBI at the highest levels were involved in a criminal conspiracy to prevent Trump from winning the election.
This establishes that the entire "Russiagate" investigation is nothing but more of the same. The real scandal is that the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies are involved in a "soft coup" against an elected President.
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Aug 11, 2016 | OffGuardian
Last month Seth Rich, a data analyst who worked for the DNC, was shot near his home in Washington DC. He was on the phone to his girlfriend when it happened. Police were called to the scene and discovered the young man's body at roughly 4.20am. It was reported that Rich was "covered in bruises", shot "several times" and "at least once in the back".
The New York Daily News reported:
" police have found little information to explain his death. At this time, there are no suspects, no motive and no witnesses in Rich's murder.While initial theories were that the killing was robbery or mugging gone wrong, the Washington Post said:
" There is no immediate indication that robbery was a motive in the attack but it has not been ruled out as a possibility."Rich's family have also reported that nothing was taken:
" [Rich's] hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything."On August 9th Julian Assange gave an interview on Dutch television in which he seemed to imply that Rich's death was politically motivated, and perhaps suggest he had been a source for the DNC e-mail leak:
That same day wikileaks tweeted that they were offering a $20,000 dollar reward for information on the killing of Mr Rich.
These are the facts of the case, so far. And they are undisputed.
I'm not going to take a position on the motive for Mr Rich's killing, or possible suspects. But I do want to point out the general level of media silence. Take these facts and change the names – imagine Trump's email had been hacked, and then a staffer with possible ties to wikileaks was inexplicably shot dead. Imagine this poor young man had been a Kremlin whistleblower, or a Chinese hacker, or an Iranian blogger.
If this, as yet unsolved, murder had ties to anyone other than Hillary Clinton, would it be being so ritually and rigourously ignored by the MSM?
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Dec 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
Anna , December 14, 2017 at 1:27 am
Are you shocked about Seth Rich murder? Wikileaks has offered a reward to speed up a search for the murderers, whereas DNC did nothing. Nothing! But the DNC was very active when certain Mr. Awan needed legal protection.
How is your Debbie Wasserman doing -- did not she threatened the DC police investigator for doing his job of investigating the Awan affair? Debbie has been a major protector of the Awan family that accomplished the greatest breach of the US cybersecurity. And how is your Nobel Peace Laureate doing -- collecting nice fees from banksters for his betrayal of democracy in the US?
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Seth Rich Murder: New Revelations
According to reports by the Daily Mail, Seth had been drinking heavily at a bar hours before his murder, witnesses said. He was extremely upset because of an argument with his girlfriend the same night.
His state of inebriation could have acted as the cause that made him a prime target for violence in the high-crime northwest Washington, DC neighborhood where he was gunned down.
Earlier, conspiracy theories were weaving that Seth was going to meet FBI agents to report on election frauds, in which Hillary Clinton was allegedly involved. However, these theories had been debunked by latest reports. But theorists are still holders of the opinion that Seth stole classified emails from the DNC and leaked to it WikiLeaks. Many theorists are sure of the speculation that it was Seth who acted as WikiLeaks' source on the leak.
To add up to the controversy, last week, Julian Assange hinted at the possibility that Seth was the source who leaked the information to WikiLeaks. Assange promptly denied the robber theory behind Seth's murder, as reported earlier by Morning News USA.
Assange also declared a sum of $20K to anyone who comes up with correct information about Seth's murder, one that could lead up to the conviction of the killer.
ALSO READ: Murdered DNC Staffer Seth Rich Divulging Election Fraud?
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A 27-year-old man who worked for the Democratic National Committee was shot and killed as he walked home early Sunday in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Northwest Washington, D.C., police and his family said.
Seth Conrad Rich died after he was shot multiple times on the 2100 block of Flagler Place NW, three blocks east of Howard University Hospital, police said.
"Worst nightmare," Rich's mother, Mary Rich, said by phone.
Mary Rich said police told her family her son may have been the victim of an attempted robbery.
He was talking on the phone with his girlfriend when she heard noise on Rich's end of the line, Mary Rich said. Her son told his girlfriend not to worry about it.
"There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything," she said. "They took his life for literally no reason. They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life," Mary Rich continued. "They hurt the community, and they hurt the long-term possibility of what he could have done."
Rich lived in the neighborhood, Acting Capt. Anthony Haythe of the Metropolitan Police Department's homicide branch said at a news conference Monday morning.Fifth District police officers were patrolling the area about 4:20 a.m. when they heard gunshots, police said.
Neighbor Mike Mueller said he also heard the shots. "I heard two sharp gunshots, very quickly. I looked at the clock and it was 4:19," he said.
When police arrived on Flagler Place, they found Rich suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.
The Omaha, Nebraska, native was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Police have no witnesses and are searching the area for surveillance video footage, Haythe said. The acting captain said he could not comment on whether the killing was related to recent robberies in the area.
Rich worked for the Democratic National Committee, his father said. He graduated from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and previously worked on Democrats' campaigns, for the U.S. Census Bureau and as a boating instructor at a summer camp, according to his LinkedIn page.
"I have an enormous interest in public service and working towards making the world a better place," Rich wrote on the page.
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www.nakedcapitalism.com
Jim Haygood , August 12, 2016 at 9:51 pm
The Ghost of Seth Rich strikes:
After disappearing for a couple of weeks, the hacker "Guccifer 2.0" returned late this afternoon to provide a new headache for Democrats.
In a post to his WordPress blog, the vandal–who previously provided nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee e-mails to Wikileaks–uploaded an Excel file that includes the cell phone numbers and private e-mail addresses of nearly every Democratic member of the House of Representatives.
The Excel file also includes similar contact information for hundreds of congressional staff members (chiefs of staff, press secretaries, legislative directors, schedulers) and campaign personnel.
In announcing the leak of the document, "Guccifer 2.0" reported that the spreadsheet was stolen during a hack of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. " As you see I wasn't wasting my time! It was even easier than in the case of the DNC breach," the hacker wrote.
http://thesmokinggun.com/buster/democratic-national-committee/guccifer-dccc-hack-645891
Bryan Pagliano could have stopped this outrage.
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www.moonofalabama.org
Yul | Aug 11, 2016 2:18:39 PM | 13WRT Seth RichTom in AZ | Aug 11, 2016 3:15:01 PM | 18check this site :
https://heatst.com/politics/mysterious-deaths-of-dncs-seth-rich-and-other-east-coast-politicos-fuel-conspiracy-theories/Mysterious Deaths of DNC's Seth Rich and Other East Coast Politicos Fuel Conspiracy Theories
The media reporting on keeps making the statement from the police 'that nothing was missing from his body or belongings'. The guy was walking around at 4 AM, and apparently no one but his killers actually saw him. So, I guess he couldn't be carrying anything outside of his pockets? In has hands?Miok | Aug 11, 2016 11:58:26 PM | 47This is supposedly from Seth rich's girlfriendBRF | Aug 12, 2016 3:01:15 PM | 63https://m.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4vqvug/dnc_staffer_seth_rich_was_set_to_expose_dnc_voter/
"From Claudia Kash: I know why Seth Rich had to die. There were 2 sets of polling places this primary season -- one set for most of the voters, who went on state websites to find their polling locations -- a second set for Hillary Clinton supporters who looked on Hillary Clinton's website to find their polling location. The Secretary of State for each state had one set of locations on >the record; the other set of locations, the ones listed on Hillary's website, were not on the state record. I know this because I looked on her website to find where a friend should vote -- then double-checked the state >website, which showed a different address. I thought there must be a mistake -- I kept checking, right up to election day.
But until they killed Seth Rich, I couldn't figure out why there would be two different polling places. This is how I think the scam worked: While most voters look up their location on their state website, voters who were signed up as Hillary Clinton supporters would be directed to her site to find their polling place. It was set up the same as any other DNC polling place -- with DNC volunteers, regular voting machines, etc. -- and a duplicate voter roster, the same as the roster at the other polling place. Voters would be checked off on the roster, same as at the other polling place... and after the polls closed, the DNC supervisor would pick up the roster and the ballots.
The supervisor would then pick up the roster at the legitimate polling place and the ballots there. He(or she) >would then replace a number of Bernie Sanders ballots with an equal number of the ballots from the Hillary >Clinton voting location. Then the duplicate roster from the HRC would be shredded and thrown away, along >with all the Bernie Sanders ballots that had been replaced. That way the number of people who voted (on the >remaining roster) still matches the number of ballots. This is why so many states reported a "lower than expected voter turnout".
Seth Rich, who was responsible for the app that helped voters find their polling places, did not realize that there were two sets of polling places until he himself went to vote. He lived in Washington DC, which voted at the end of the primary season, a week after Clinton had already been declared the winner. I believe he discovered it then, and had started asking questions about why the polling places on Hillary's website didn't match the ones on the DC website.
But even if he didn't say a word to anybody, it would have been dangerous to let him live. He would have >figured it out sooner or later -- and he would have reported it when he did."
Seems a straight Machiavellian operation. Murder the young insider, Seth Rich, that leaked the emails to Assange's Wikileaks and then blame it on an enemy that none can fact check on. DNC= Deep National Control.
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Aug 10, 2016 | off-guardian.org
OffGuardian because facts really should be sacred Menu Search
Close Menu latest , media watch , United States Published on August 10, 2016 Comments 53 Seth Rich murder: The facts so far written by Kit i 3 VotesLast month Seth Rich, a data analyst who worked for the DNC, was shot near his home in Washington DC. He was on the phone to his girlfriend when it happened. Police were called to the scene and discovered the young man's body at roughly 4.20am. It was reported that Rich was "covered in bruises", shot "several times" and "at least once in the back".
The New York Daily News reported :
police have found little information to explain his death. At this time, there are no suspects, no motive and no witnesses in Rich's murder.
While initial theories were that the killing was robbery or mugging gone wrong, the Washington Post said :
There is no immediate indication that robbery was a motive in the attack but it has not been ruled out as a possibility."
Rich's family have also reported that nothing was taken :
[Rich's] hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything."
On August 9th Julian Assange gave an interview on Dutch television in which he seemed to imply that Rich's death was politically motivated, and perhaps suggest he had been a source for the DNC e-mail leak:
That same day wikileaks tweeted that they were offering a $20,000 dollar reward for information on the killing of Mr Rich.
These are the facts of the case, so far. And they are undisputed.
I'm not going to take a position on the motive for Mr Rich's killing, or possible suspects. But I do want to point out the general level of media silence. Take these facts and change the names – imagine Trump's email had been hacked, and then a staffer with possible ties to wikileaks was inexplicably shot dead. Imagine this poor young man had been a Kremlin whistleblower, or a Chinese hacker, or an Iranian blogger.
If this, as yet unsolved, murder had ties to anyone other than Hillary Clinton, would it be being so ritually and rigourously ignored by the MSM?
If you liked this then please share!: Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) 857 Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) 857 Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) 1 Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) 1 Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window) Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Click to print (Opens in new window) Click to email (Opens in new window) Like this: Like Loading... latest , media watch , United States Tagged with: Democratic National Convention , DNC , Hillary Clinton , julian assange , Seth Rich , Wikileaks 53 CommentsBruce Conklin says May 17, 2017
Seth was bruised, and shot twice in the back; there was no robbery. Former Clinton partner James MacDougall was separated from his heart medication by prison guards; he died in solitary confinement.Kenneth Jones says August 12, 2017And these suspicious deaths aren't connected? Who do they think they're kidding? We weren't all born stupid! Is this a massive cover up? You bet it is, and we're eventually going to find out who ordered those killings!Kraut says August 19, 2016Interesting body language at 1:05min: "Was he one of your sources?" Assange slightly nods, says: "We don't comment on our sources ."Brian Harry, Australia says October 21, 2016In fairness to Assange, the video and the sound are not in sync .wernerpd says November 15, 2016I believe the precise term is "Arkancide."Douglas Gray says August 12, 2016The Washington Post said, "Nothing was taken, but robbery has not been ruled out????" What does that mean? If nothing was taken, then there is no robbery. Who wrote this for the Washington Post? Is English their native language?Stu Piddy says August 12, 2016Ask his girl friend some questions. She would probably know a lot, including if he was the leaker.Me says August 12, 2016Julian Assange did not say Rich was a source. It is highly unlikely Rich was a source, I can't see Wikileaks revealing a source regardless of circumstance. Wikileaks obviously have information pointing to the idea that this was a politically motivated killing. He is concerned that this, in turn will lead to all dissidents being frightened to stand up and speak out.Marina Boyd says August 12, 2016Maybe wikileaks doesn't know who their source was. The DNC authenticated the e-mails by their response, then they float the "Russia influencing US elections narrative" to distract from Seth's murder.brian says August 12, 2016Has there be ANY evidence that Russia was behind the hack? Where did that rumer start?? WikiLeaks has a vested interest in Seth's murder being solved because they don't want people being afraid to give them information, so I understand them offering a reward, even if he wasn't their source, once the rumors started, they wouldn't want to scare off the real source, or futur sources. http://www.prosewestand.org
I am afraid to leave a comment. I am afraid to speak my heart. Just vote for Trump or anyone else who can win. Enough said.Eric Edblad says August 15, 2016Don't be afraid! The "Problem" will not come after you because True Americans are watching every political detail and the Problem knows that! If common people start dying for their free speech–many American's are waiting for a reason to make a stand against the Problem, their constituency and their conspiracies! If you think about it, some of the press is helping the Problem take away your free speech as well! This is not going unnoticed. CNN is the worst conspirator out there!!Kathy says August 27, 2016The Problem is afraid of Donald Trump because he will shake up their house! Mrs. Clinton and the press want to put you in politically-correct bondage experienced in much of the world. Those countries are ruled by their Problem and worse. The only way to maintain the balance of powers in America is that True Americans exercise their constitutional leverage with free speech! Exercise it freely every day!
In this day and age any unprotected informant should have a concealed carry permit and a gun! I will refrain from getting into the 2nd Amendment discussion–may not be appropriate for this discussion ..
No matter how it turns out, my condolences to the family of Seth Rich
Eric, Well said I'm with youBrad Benson says August 11, 2016Excellent. People are beginning to link to you guys.Bozo says August 11, 2016Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize!BigB says August 11, 2016Could be nothingMarina Boyd says August 12, 2016Probably a little more difficult to get anyone willing to serve them now.Mary says September 2, 2016Also, around the same time of Rich Seth and Shawn Lucas deaths, Victor Thorn, who wrote at least 20 anti-Clinton books, supposedly committed suicide. Makes one wonder what is really going onAlan says August 11, 2016So many theories and those, who appear to want to profit. This young man is dead with an on going investigation. Given his connection whatever verdict is reached will be a whitewash, can we blame those who disbelieve? A history of victims with throats cut, gunshot wounds to the back, judged as suicides or bizarrely as natural causes? We are surrounded by the most callous whose trade is 'the good of society', are we to be a part of that? Whatever the motive a lost life and decimated family cannot be used for gain, whether it be ratings, publicity or a confirmation of ones own theories.robert costa says August 11, 2016the road to the clinton power regime is littered with bodies. vince foster and ron brown. and more recently john ashe and shawn lucas. add seth rich to the list. good luck if you work for the dnc or in her campaign. the clintons are completely corrupt and morally bankrupt.KLB says August 11, 2016The Clinton rumors have been around for over 20 years. Clintons had nothing to do with this. He was probably involved in something deeper. There are no missing bodies. Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Ken Starr are all still around and they would be the ones to go. Get a clue. No one's missing and Foster suffered from severe depression. Do some research.AnotherLover says August 12, 2016The lead investigator, Manuel Rodriguez, resigned from the case because when he followed the leads that clearly showed MURDER he found HIMSELF investigated! Here, read his resignation letter:Judianne says August 16, 2016
http://www.dcdave.com/article5/MiguelRodriguezLetter.htm
Quick quote (USPP stands for US Park Police. THAT is who had jurisdiction on the possible murder of a United States politician. The Park Police):(10) the existing FBI interview reports and USPP interview reports do not accurately reflect witness statements; (11) four emergency medical personnel identified, having refreshed their recollection with new photographic evidence, trauma each had observed on Foster's right neck area; and (12) blurred and obscured blow-ups of copies of (polaroid [sic] and 35mm) photographs have been offered and utilized. After uncovering this information, among other facts, my own conduct was questioned and I was internally investigated.
DCDave has been doggedly researching this case for years. He's just kept at it. Here's a great article, among many, by him:
http://www.dcdave.com/article5/091217.htmCheers!
All of those people you mentioned were constantly in yhe public eye. In fact, they've been household names for over 20 years. If they were to die "mysteriously," it would shoot up too many red flags and would make it a lot easier to connect the dots to the Clintons. They might have wanted these people to disappear, but it would have been way too risky to make that happen. .. which is why some of them went out of their ways to remain relevant. As far as the murdered individuals are concerned I think you should consider this fact. During the course of a very lengthy political career, it's entirely possible for one or two people to die of unnatural, non disease related causes, but when the death toll surpasses 50 and is still counting, that just might be the smoke from a fire raging out of control. Hence, the so called conspiracy theories.Vera says August 14, 2016Please keep this brutal murder in the spotlight. Julian isn't offering $20.000 without an inkling it's tied to the Clinton's campaign.Polly Ticker (@MollyWolly8) says August 10, 2016
The press are too busy destroying trump.
It's rather scary.Here is alternative, crazed anarchist Assange being interviewed by CNN from the Ecuadorian embassy.Brian Harry, Australia says August 10, 2016http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/30/politics/julian-assange-wikileaks-democrats/
Is Ecuador some kind of Shangri La anarchist freedom republic or
"The administration of President Rafael Correa has expanded state control over media and civil society and abused its power to harass, intimidate, and punish critics. In 2015, thousands of people participated in public demonstrations against government policies, and security forces on multiple occasions responded with excessive force. Abuses against protesters, including arbitrary arrests, have not been adequately investigated."
"Crazed anarchist"???Polly Ticker (@MollyWolly8) says August 10, 2016I was being sarcastic. Assange was supposed to be some way out there anarchist, anti capitalist hacker. He might have been before he was busted and 'pardoned' from a 10 year prison sentence in Australia.Brian Harry, Australia says August 10, 2016"In 1991, at the age of 20, Assange and some fellow hackers broke into the master terminal of Nortel, the Canadian telecom company. He was caught and pleaded guilty to 25 charges; six other charges were dropped. Citing Assange's "intelligent inquisitiveness," the judge sentenced him only to pay the Australian state a small sum in damages".
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2006496,00.html#ixzz16cuIO0Fz
Sorry, I took your comment literally ..Richard Le Sarcophage says August 10, 2016A crazy hasbaranik has landed! 'Human Rights Watch, in my very firm opinion, are a rabble of mostly Judeofascist hypocrites who work hand in glove with the US regime to blackguard and vilify states targeted for regime change for attempting to create decent societies for their people. I wouldn't cross the street to piss on them if they were on fire.Brian Harry, Australia says August 11, 2016"Like"elenits says August 11, 2016"Like" .Polly Ticker (@MollyWolly8) says August 10, 2016We know that he told Wikileaks and now he's dead. Bradley manning's info was spilled too.Richard Le Sarcophage says August 11, 2016Wikileaks is a fraud Guardian – John Young http://goo.gl/AbCV
"But the group ran in to problems even before WikiLeaks was launched. The organisers approached John Young, who ran another website that posted leaked documents, Cryptome, and asked him to register the WikiLeaks website in his name. Young obliged and was initially an enthusiastic supporter but when the organisers announced their intention to try and raise $5m he questioned their motives, saying that kind of money could only come from the CIA or George Soros. Then he walked away.
"WikiLeaks is a fraud," he wrote in an email when he quit. "Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign against legitimate dissent. Same old shit, working for the enemy." Young then leaked all of his email correspondence with WikiLeak's founders, including the messages to Ellsberg."
Wikileaks pretty plainly started as a US tool to attack the likes of China, but then Assange may or may not have gone 'off reservation', so he was set up by US stooge regime Sweden, in the usual blatant fashion. And Assange's little buddies at the Guardian cess-pool turned against him with Old Testament fury, in particular unleashing their pack of feminazi Harpies to vilify him. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him.Polly Ticker (@MollyWolly8) says August 11, 2016Wikileaks was created to foment internal trouble in the Middle East states and trigger the Arab Spring. It's basically the NSA's own conspiracy generator.The guy says August 11, 2016https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/13/amnesty-international-wikileaks-arab-spring
Really? Wowelenits says August 11, 2016And nowhere in the Wikileaks docs is ANY reference to 911. Same with "Snowden".AnotherLover says August 12, 2016
Looks like a case of – twang! – Coincidence Theory .elenits:Polly Ticker (@MollyWolly8) says August 14, 2016
Tried to "like" your post, but for some reason I can only reply, and face the login screen when I try to "like." Loved the comment. Twang! (I'm using that!)BIG like.AnotherLover says August 12, 2016Killing it! It seems more and more like Trump's the plant, huh? A true know-nothing that can ONLY do what his advisors tell him to. And the Trump election is likely to bring whatever Americans can muster up as a race war into being (comment directed at the fact everybody's fluoridated to the gills these days and likely UNABLE to really riot). I think the controllers really, really, really want that.Seamus Padraig says August 10, 2016My GUT told me all this about Assange when he first appeared. Same thing with "please-employ-encryption-so-we-know-who-to-watch" Snowden. Encryption's just about the FIRST thing I was interested in when I bought my first laptop, so the LAW barring encryption past a certain strength on the open market was one of the first things I found out about! Whatever encryption you can get is hacked. Period.
Great info on Assange.
The old Clinton body-count just a keeps on growin'! Not imagine what she could accomplish with a fleet of drones at her command, eh people?Brian Harry, Australia says August 10, 2016"Like"Sasha says August 10, 2016Wouldn't be the first time. The Clintons have a trail of bodies behind them that puts MacBeth to shame.elenits says August 11, 2016http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/BODIES.php
Ambrose Evans Pritchard is in the forefront of the Clinton exposure:
Wikipedia:
"During his time as the Sunday Telegraph's Washington, D.C. bureau chief in the early 1990s, Evans-Pritchard became known for his controversial stories about President Bill Clinton, the 1993 death of Vincent Foster, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.He is the author of The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories (1997) which was published by conservative publishing firm Regnery Publishing.[1] In this book, he elaborates on assertions that the Oklahoma City bombing was a sting operation by the FBI that went horribly wrong, that ATF agents were warned against reporting to work in the Murrah Building the morning of the attack, and that the Justice Department subsequently engaged in a cover-up.[2]
Coverage of US politics
During his time in Washington, his stories often attracted the ire of the Clinton administration, and on Evans-Pritchard's departure from Washington in 1997, a White House aide was quoted in George saying, "That's another British invasion we're glad is over. The guy was nothing but a pain in the ass". His efforts in ferreting out the witness, Patrick Knowlton, whose last name had been spelled "Nolton" in the Park Police report on Foster's death, resulted eventually in a lawsuit by Knowlton against the FBI and the inclusion of Knowlton's lawyer's letter as an appendix to Kenneth Starr's report on Foster's death.[3] In his book, Evans-Pritchard responded vigorously to White House charges against him.
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www.redstate.com
It's hard to overstate the amount of caution we should all display with this story, but it's too newsworthy to ignore.It starts with this interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange where he brings up murdered DNC staffer, Seth Rich, unprompted.
Here's the juicy part:ASSANGE: Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. There's a 27 year old that works for the DNC, he was shot in the back. Murdered, uh just a few weeks ago, uh, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington. So...
INTERVIEWER: That was, that was just a robbery I believe. Wasn't it?
ASSANGE: No. There's no finding. So...
INTERVIEWER: What are you suggesting? What are you suggesting?
ASSANGE: I'm suggesting our sources take risks and they uh, become concerned, uh to see things occurring, like that.
INTERVIEWER: Was he one of your sources then? I mean...
ASSANGE: We don't comment on who our sources are.
INTERVIEWER: Then why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?
ASSANGE: Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States. And our sources are ... you know... our sources face serious risks. That's why they come to us, so we can protect their anonymity.
Then comes the news that Wikileaks is offering a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the capture of Rich's murderer.
Google matched content |
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Julian Assange About Seth Rich Murder - YouTube
Seth Rich death WikiLeaks offers $20,000 reward for killer of murdered DNC staffer
DNC Worker Seth Conrad Rich Gunned Down on the Way to Meet FBI snopes.com
Seth Rich's Death Know Your Meme
Seth Rich Murder Hillary Clinton Allegedly Wanted Him In Campaign Days Before His Death
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