After the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich last July, many suspected that his death was not the result of a robbery as police claimed, but an execution-style murder as payback for his part in providing the leaked DNC e-mails published by WikiLeaks. As more information continues to come to light, much of it lends credibility to that idea. It is beginning to look as though Seth Rich was “Vince-Fostered” — albeit with the element of a fake robbery instead of a fake suicide.
As The New American reported last week, private investigator Rod Wheeler, who has been working on the case for the Rich family, claimed that a laptop computer contains evidence that Rich was the source of the WikiLeaks DNC publications. Our article continued:
Police said the death of Rich was the result of a robbery in an area of the city with escalating levels of crime, including armed robbery. But when Rich was found shot twice in the back at 4:20 a.m., nothing was missing: He still had his watch, phone, and wallet. His father said, “If it was a robbery — it failed because he still has his watch, he still has his money — he still has his credit cards, still had his phone so it was a wasted effort except we lost a life.”
Many speculated at the time that Rich may have been involved in leaking the DNC e-mails to WikiLeaks and may have been on his way to the FBI office to blow an even bigger whistle when he was killed. Then, one month after Rich’s murder, Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, appeared on the Dutch television program Nieuwsuur to discuss the DNC leaks and said:
Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. 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.
When asked to clarify, Assange said, “So … I’m suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.” Pressed as to whether he was saying Rich was the source, Assange answered, “We don’t comment on who our sources are.” When asked why he would “make the suggestion” about Rich, Assange came closer than ever to implying that there was a connection. “Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources are — our sources face serious risks,” Assange said, adding, “That’s why they come to us, so we can protect their anonymity.”
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Now, Internet entrepreneur and political party founder Kim Dotcom is claiming that he knows Rich was WikiLeaks’ source because, he says, he communicated with Rich about it. Kim Dotcom was born Kim Schmitz and — after becoming wealthy was a result of his Internet businesses — legally changed his name in 2005. His most successful Internet company was MegaUpload, which provided cloud services to individuals and companies. In 2012, Dotcom’s home in New Zealand was raided, he was arrested, and many valuable assets were seized. He was accused of facilitating copyright infringement because many users of his cloud service made copyrighted materials — including movies, music, and software — available for others to download.
Dotcom has spent the ensuing years fighting both the case against him and efforts to extradite him to the United States. Now, he says that he not only has evidence that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC leaks, but that he would be willing to come to the United States “if appropriate arrangements are made” giving him “a guarantee from Special Counsel Mueller, on behalf of the United States, of safe passage from New Zealand to the United States and back.”
Dotcom wrote on a statement on his website that he had communicated with Rich, who was interested in helping Dotcom’s Internet Party:
I know that Seth Rich was involved in the DNC leak. I know this because in late 2014 a person contacted me about helping me to start a branch of the Internet Party in the United States. He called himself Panda. I now know that Panda was Seth Rich.
Panda advised me that he was working on voter analytics tools and other technologies that the Internet Party may find helpful.
I communicated with Panda on a number of topics including corruption and the influence of corporate money in politics.
His statement — which appears on his website against the background of a picture of President Trump — goes on to say that, after speaking to his lawyers, he is willing to provide U.S. authorities with the evidence he has in the case:
I have consulted with my lawyers. I accept that my full statement should be provided to the authorities and I am prepared to do that so that there can be a full investigation. My lawyers will speak with the authorities regarding the proper process.
If my evidence is required to be given in the United States I would be prepared to do so if appropriate arrangements are made. I would need a guarantee from Special Counsel Mueller, on behalf of the United States, of safe passage from New Zealand to the United States and back. In the coming days we will be communicating with the appropriate authorities to make the necessary arrangements. In the meantime, I will make no further comment.
That Dotcom would be willing to risk a trip stateside to give testimony and evidence into the murder of Rich certainly adds weight and credence to his claims. Given all he has to lose, that is a very big risk.
So far, the police investigators have nothing except their claim that Rich was killed in a robbery where nothing was taken. They have no suspects, no evidence, no witnesses. Just a claim that makes no sense.
On the other side of the argument, WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange has alluded to Rich being the source of the leaks; a private investigator and former D.C. police homicide detective has claimed that inside sources have told him the laptop belonging to Rich shows that Rich was communicating with WikiLeaks before his murder; and Kim Dotcom is willing to risk a trip to a country that wants to put him in prison (for hosting a cloud service) in order to deliver testimony and evidence that he communicated with Rich and knows he was the source of the DNC leaks published by WikiLeaks.
Trump’s enemies in politics, media, and intelligence have made much of the allegations that Trump is connected to and controlled by Moscow. When the DNC e-mails and documents were leaked — showing illegal and unethical actions within the DNC and Clinton campaign — Trump’s enemies claimed it was the result of Russian hackers.
Of course, if (and it looks likely) Rich did leak the DNC e-mails and documents published by WikiLeaks, then there was no “hacking” — Russian or otherwise — and a major part of the establishment’s attacks against President Trump falls under its own weight.
