Yellow Turban Tribune

Note: This article was originally published on Heft.Live on April 9.  It passed editorial review, became the most read article on the site, and then was later retracted by the same editor who approved it claiming it was unsubstantiated and related to consipiracy theories that are promoted amongst the “left and alt-right” alike.  This happened after FOX retracted a different story about an FBI report of Seth Rich’s computer being used to forward thousands of emails from the DNC.  This is NOT the same story.  I, personally, still stand behind the story.

On July 10, 2016, Seth Rich, a DNC staffer, was suddenly murdered a block away from his home in Washington, DC at 4:19 AM.  There were signs of a struggle and two gunshots in his back were reported as the official cause of his death.  Police suggested that it may have been an attempted robbery, as the neighborhood had been recently plagued by such armed robberies.  Yet, anything he had of value: his wallet, cell phone, watch, credit cards were all still on his body as Newsweek reported.

While the DNC Leaks themselves were not released until July 26, Julian Assange was on British TV in June discussing that they had the emails.  The odd fact of his being murdered during the anticipation of the release of the DNC Leaks with no apparent motive – his belongings were all left with him – led many to immediately speculate that Seth Rich had leaked these documents and this was revenge for his part in the leak.  It was reminiscent of how Junior Soprano tried to have Tony whacked in The Sopranos: hire a seemingly unrelated group to kill the target and make it seem like it was just mundane inner city crime rather than a political move.

According to CrowdStrike’s report, they first started analyzing the hacking of DNC servers in late June 2016.  Therefore, if CrowdStrike was able to determine that the leaks did originate through Seth Rich, there would be time for any plan to have him assassinated to be made and executed by July 10.

Increasing suspicions, Julian Assange announced a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the murder of Seth Rich.  The reward itself, however, did not actually mean that Rich was the leaker.  Assange refused to confirm or deny that Seth Rich was the source of the leaks.  Wikileaks wants to protect its sources, so someone who was highly suspected of being a source needed to be given protection as if they were, even if they were not.  If Rich wasn’t the leak, Wikileaks could not afford to treat him different because that would be a signal that the leaker was still out there, endangering their actual source.  Because he was suspected, he got the full red carpet treatment.

There was a lot of circumstantial evidence that Seth Rich was the leaker, but no solid evidence.  To the right of the DNC establishment, Republicans felt that it was a political murder.  To the left of the DNC establishment, Berniecrats and those on the left felt it was a political murder.  Yet, all evidence was circumstantial and there was no real investigation, certainly not of the DNC and its operatives.

What CrowdSource released suggested that Russian hackers breached the DNC servers and then gave the information to Wikileaks – a story which suggested that Seth Rich was unnecessary in any plot, so Democratic Party loyalists could rest on that to deflect attacks.  Sam Biddle of The Intercept laid out exactly how ridiculous the evidence that CrowdStrike presented was, without them taking pause.  It seemed not to be evidence that Russia hacked the servers as much as that someone was sloppily trying to frame Russia for hacking the servers.  If Russia is going to deny hacking these servers, it seems odd that they would create an account named after a famous Soviet era chief of secret police, in Cyrillic no less, rather than just naming the account Frank Smith or James Thomas – which would be expected of an “elite” team of hackers.

I wrote an article for the Inquisitr about the DNC refusing access to the FBI of these same servers.  The article covered how the FBI had requested the DNC grant them access to the hacked servers in July, but that request was turned down by the DNC who chose instead to have the servers analyzed by CrowdStrike, a service that would be lesser than that provided by the FBI and which they would have to pay for as opposed to the free services which would be provided by the FBI. The FBI was forced to rely upon CrowdStrike after that point because they compromised the crime scene – the servers – and thus could not do their own investigation afterward.

At that time, I was under the mistaken assumption that CrowdStrike began their analysis after that point – but they apparently began a month prior to the FBI’s request, having already compromised the servers by that time.  Discussions had been going on for an unspecified time previously, during which the DNC should have brought up the issue – we do not know if the discussions began prior to CrowdStrike’s work or not.

However, what is important here is the fact that CrowdStrike having access to the server makes it so that the FBI cannot do their own research later.  The reason for that is that they can alter what is on the server, and maliciously so.  For example, they could alter Seth Rich’s account’s log to hide the fact that he accessed things on the server needed for the leak, create fake accounts named after Russian secret police, add documents written in Cyrillic, and then backdate the entire thing to make it seem like it all happened at an earlier date.  They could have doesn’t mean they did, but they certainly could have.

How could they have done such a thing?  All information on any computer, including the metadata of files that say when they were created and modified, is just a matter of 1s and 0s saved on the hard drive by microscopic switches being either on or off.  There is a handy guide on just how to alter this data.  Alternatively, you could easily just change the time on the server to an earlier date.  It’s a rather simple technique that I lazily applied when I wrote Predictions for the future dated November 4, 1980, as Americans set out to the polls to elect Ronald Reagan president for the first time.  You can believe it’s possible for this data to be easily manipulated or you can believe I wrote about our next 5 presidents and September 11, 2001 almost two years before I was even born in a file format that didn’t exist at the time.

If Seth Rich was murdered for leaking these documents to Guccifer 2.0, or intentionally doing something that gave access to Guccifer 2.0, and given the red flags that went up, you want to alter the server to make it look like he had nothing to do with the breach and rather some third party was responsible.  Hillary Clinton and the neoliberal/neoconservative establishment of the Democratic Party have been having problems with Russia as of late – namely conflicts with Syria which Hillary Clinton wanted to destabilize and which Vladimir Putin wanted to keep stable.  Why not blame it on them to help gather support for soon-to-be President Clinton’s escalation of the conflict in Syria?

There is no way to tell from looking at the server, if done skillfully, whether or not this is what happened.  Short of leaks coming from the DNC or CrowdStrike, there is no way to be absolutely certain.  However, we do know that if Seth Rich was politically assassinated, or even if he was responsible but then was murdered through a fluke of fate, there was motive to do something like this.  We do know that the evidence they reported was awkward and not at all matching what would be expected of an elite team of hackers like APT 28 or APT 29.  It appears to be someone trying to frame Russia and doing it poorly, and the DNC and CrowdStrike, who is working for them, would have incentive to make such a frame job.

Well, that takes us to a tweet.

Guccifer 2.0 Admits #SethRich Was The Source Of DNC Files https://t.co/7NOUqn1cja

— Robbin Young (@Robbin_Young) April 9, 2017

 

Actress Robbin Young tweeted that Guccifer 2.0 had direct messages with her in which he revealed that Seth Rich was his source.  She also provides a full transcript, screen by screen, on her website.  In the long discussion, Robbin Young has a long discussion where Guccifer 2.0 is clearly taken by her and they flirt quite a bit, including a part where it can be presumed that she sent him nudes, and he broke down and started telling her about several people he knew, including a suggestion that Julian Assange may be connected with Russians and that some people say that Edward Snowden is homosexual, but he makes the claim that “[S]eth” was his whistleblower, implying she would know who, then stating he thought he was assassinated and he didn’t think it was just a robbery.

Guccifer 2.0’s opinion on whether it was an assassination isn’t particularly notable, he had no information beyond the rest of us; however, he alone would be certain who was his whistleblower.

To be fair, Guccifer 2.0 does not have a flawless record when it comes to releasing information.  In October, he released several documents he described as coming from the Clinton Foundation, but which are almost universally accepted as having come from previous hacks of other organizations, most notably of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as the Washington Times reported.

However, the conversation does not lead one to believe that Guccifer 2.0 was trying to plant false information with Robbin Young, but rather was feeling intimacy and revealing things he normally would not.  Had he wanted to reveal Seth Rich as his whistleblower falsely, one would presume he would have done so publicly on his own Twitter account unprovoked, not wait for an actress to happen to flirt with him for an extended period of time.

This revelation makes a huge difference in the narrative.  We do not know exactly what Seth’s role was – if he specifically accessed the emails on his own and handed them to Guccifer – who then did not hack them – or if he simply planted an executable file on the server which created a breach that Guccifer could then exploit and give himself more power.  We do know that Seth Rich was central to the leaks, however.  Now that we know that Seth Rich is indeed involved in the DNC Leaks, this changes everything.

Was he assassinated?  We have the first part of the motive for this proven – he crossed the DNC and embarassed many of their top officers and tarnished the Clinton campaign.  It is reasonable that this was discovered by CrowdStrike in late June and reported to the DNC, which is the second half of that motive – knowledge of his actions.  It was then possible for his involvement to be covered up and replaced with a different actor to deflect attention from the fact that this guy ended up dead and mysteriously not robbed as if the sole purpose was to kill him.  It also could be used for political leverage by the establishment Democrats and it would reasonably be the origins of the Russiagate scandal we have going on now – which has people ignoring what a horrible candidate Hillary Clinton was and how fed up Americans were with the neoliberal/neoconservative policies that characterize the establishments of both major political parties and now the actual presidential policies of Donald Trump.

We cannot say with certainty that Seth Rich was assassinated for political reasons and the largest political scandal around is driven by this cover up.  However, there is compelling enough evidence to fully justify an investigation at least as thorough as the bloated one trying to tie Donald Trump with Russian collusion.  In fact, the two investigations are interrelated.

Donald Trump is a piss poor president to be sure – less qualified than your average elementary school student.  But he is taking the heat in this Russiagate investigation without any justification in reality and it appears to be an elaborate cover up of a much more menacing threat, one domestic and tyrannical.  We need to know how high up this goes in the DNC, who was involved, and how this unfolded.  We need to reflect on our political system to question how such a Putinesque event could have happened in this country and we by-and-large ignored it.  Substantial reform absolutely must come from this as we look back at the folly of assuming that those in power are benevolent because this is America.

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Featured image from Newsweek.  It is claimed that this single use is valid for non-profit purposes under fair use.