Seth Rich is pictured on a poster created by police officials to urge people with information about his murder to come forward. (Credit: Metropolitan Police Department)
“The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich—who was murdered in 2016 by unknown assailants—but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer, the bureau revealed in a new filing.
The FBI’s records office located the report while searching for the work computer, Michael Seidel, chief of the office, said in a sworn declaration filed with a federal court in Texas on Dec. 9.
He described the document as “a three (3) page forensic report detailing the actions performed by an outside entity to image the work laptop.”
The report was among four documents that never had been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.
Journalist Sy Hersh said a source told him around 2017 about an FBI report on Rich. According to the source, Rich’s computer showed the DNC staffer had relayed DNC documents to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency group. Hersh spoke about the source’s claims during a phone call with Ed Butowsky, an investor who later retracted claims about Rich’s brother Aaron being a WikiLeaks source, and discussed the call during a deposition.
(…) The new records were found after the records office contacted an unnamed FBI special agent during its search for Rich’s work computer, according to Seidel.
The other records include a letter from a third party that accompanied the work computer and two FBI chain of custody forms.
None of the records were indexed to Rich inside of the bureau’s central records system, and neither the forensic report nor the custody forms mention Rich’s name, according to the FBI. They also weren’t included in an electronic file created for Rich’s case.
The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.
The FBI now wants the court to agree to keep the new records shielded from Brian Huddleston, a Texas resident who filed a lawsuit against the bureau for ignoring a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records on Rich.” (Read more: The Epoch Times) (Archive)