Did Seth Rich Contact WikiLeaks?

Two stories are now dominating the headlines: one is something the Establishment wants you to pay attention to, and the other is something they want to bury. First off, to the former:

The Washington Beltway is in an uproar over the latest Deep State attempt to tar the President of the United States as a Russian agent: they’re claiming Trump gave super-duper Top Secret information – provided, it turns out, by the Israelis – to the Russians during a meeting with the Kremlin’s Foreign Minister and their ambassador at the White House.

There are two problems with this story: if the anonymous former and currently serving “intelligence officials” cited by the Washington Post were really concerned about the damage done to our “sources and methods,” they would never have leaked this story in the first place. Secondly, everyone in the room at the time, including National  Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, denies it.

Far from proving Trump is either the Manchurian candidate and/or is playing fast and loose with our national security, it merely shows – once again – that the “intelligence community” is out to depose him by any means necessary. Add to this Israel’s amen corner, which is now screeching that Trump “betrayed” Israel.

The other story, however, is something our spooks don’t want you to even know about. Fox News reported earlier today [Wednesday] that the private investigator hired by the family of Seth Rich – but paid for by a third party – is now saying there’s solid evidence that Rich – a former DNC employee, embedded in their computer operations – was in contact with WikiLeaks.

Rich was murdered in the wee hours of July 10, 2016. His wallet, his watch, and valuables were still on him, despite claims it was a botched robbery. Days later, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his murderers.

Fox News is reporting that Rich’s computer shows “44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between DNC leaders” passed between Rich and WikiLeaks. They cite not only Rod Wheeler, a former Washington DC homicide detective hired by the Rich family to solve the case, but also a “federal investigator” who corroborates Wheeler’s claims:

“An FBI forensic report of Rich’s computer – generated within 96 hours after Rich’s murder – showed he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time, the federal source told Fox News.

“’I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,’ the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.”

Speaking of WikiLeaks: a largely overlooked email from John Podesta’s leaked account has him saying: “I am definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker.” It kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?

I’ve said from the beginning that 1) There is no convincing evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC, or fooled John Podesta into giving out his email account password, and 2) It was most likely an inside job. While it may be an overstatement to say that this latest story confirms it, it certainly calls the Russian conspiracy theory into serious question.

Yet both the House and the Senate have launched investigations designed to prove “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin – to say nothing of the FBI probe. Will the same attention be paid to the Rich-MacFayden correspondence?

Of course not.

The Rich family is denying that there’s any evidence their son was in contact with WikiLeaks: but their official spokesman – yes, they have one – is one Brad Bauman, a self-described “crisis consultant” for the Democrats. Which is very appropriate, since these new revelations do indeed constitute a crisis for the Democrats, who have based their entire post-election strategy on a flimsy conspiracy theory that has been debunked by cyber-security experts (the ones who aren’t in the pay of the DNC, that is)..

Wheeler says that a local police officer in Washington "looked me straight in the eye" and told him they had been ordered to "stand down" on Rich’s case. As for the “mainstream” media, they don’t have to be told to stand down – they’re doing it instinctively.

But no worries! Antiwar.com was founded to blast through the “mainstream” media wall of silence. That’s our job, and we’ve been doing it for over 20 years. But we can’t continue to do it without your help. This Russia conspiracy theory is just plain bonkers, and is clearly the creation of political opportunists and Deep State spooks who have a vested interest in pushing it.

Well, we have a vested interest in the truth. And so do you. That’s why supporting Antiwar.com should be near the top of your agenda right now: because a site like this has never been more necessary.

But it doesn’t come free! We depend on you, our readers, to donate the funds we need to continue. So don’t let the “mainstream” media pull the wool over America’s eyes – make your tax-deductible donation today.

Postscript: By the way, the Fox News story on the Seth Rich-Wikileaks connection, by reporter Malia Zimmerman, went through several interesting iterations since its original publication. See here.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

Author: Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo passed away on June 27, 2019. He was the co-founder and editorial director of Antiwar.com, and was a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He was a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and wrote a monthly column for Chronicles. He was the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].