Peter Strzok and the FBI Coverup of Seth Rich’s Murder

Dec. 15, 2020 (EIRNS)—A central tenet in the creation of the Russiagate myth was the lie that Russian hackers stole material embarrassing to Hillary Clinton from the DNC and then gave that material to WikiLeaks, which printed it, to the effect of causing her to lose the 2016 election. As has been shown by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), Adam Carter, and the Forensicator, the supposed Russian hacker who performed the dirty deed, Guccifer 2.0, is a deliberate hoax.

But if the Russians didn’t give the material to WikiLeaks, who did? Seth Rich, a DNC staffer murdered in a supposed robbery in which he wasn’t robbed, is widely assumed to have been the source.

The Dec. 9th letter from the FBI to lawyer Ty Clevenger, which admitted that they have possession of Seth Rich’s laptop and they are processing over 20,000 pages related to Rich, estimates that it would be around nine months before they could process the material. However, some of what is in the 20,000 pages is already known.

Judicial Watch previously obtained emails on Seth Rich that had been exchanged between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his lover, Department of Justice lawyer Lisa Page. Though they are heavily redacted, they do show that on Aug. 10, 2016, Julian Assange’s public suggestions that Rich was a source for WikiLeaks set off a chain of activity at the FBI. (Rich had been murdered in July, and, despite all denials by the FBI of any involvement in the investigation, they had Rich’s laptop.)

On Wednesday morning, August 10, 2016, at 10:32 a.m., “DELETED” from the Public Affairs section of the FBI Washington Field Office sent an email to DELETED at the FBI:

”Subject: Seth Rich... Various news outlets are reporting today that Julian Assange suggested during a recent overseas interview that DNC Staffer, Seth Rich was a WikiLeaks source, and may have been killed because he leaked the DNC e-mails to his organization, and that WikiLeaks was offering $20,000 for information regarding Rich’s death last month. Based on this news, we anticipate additional press coverage on this matter.... [W]hen you have a moment, can you please give me a call to discuss what involvement the Bureau has in the investigation.”

The email is forwarded repeatedly around the FBI that day, and at 7:49 p.m., Strzok forwarded to Page an email from DELETED to Jonathan C. Moffa and Peter P. Strzok: “Subject Fwd: Seth Rich... Just FYSA. I squashed this with DELETED.” Apparently, by the end of the day, somebody squashed something, and they thought Moffa and Strzok should know. Since they had the laptop, and since their public line until Dec. 9, 2020 has been that they had no involvement, one can assume that the Washington field office was told by headquarters that day that the line would be that there was no FBI involvement.

Moffa was the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI. As he describes it: “I was the section chief over counterintelligence analysis during the period of the election.... So in a sense, if there’s a Russian-election-related investigation underway in the division at that point, personnel reporting to me are a part of it.” According to their text messages, Moffa and Strzok collaborated that August on the use of Christopher Steele as a CHS (Confidential Human Source) in the “Russia interfered in the election” operation. So, they were assured on Aug. 10, 2016 that the Seth Rich story was being managed, so as not to undermine their “Russia did it” operation.

Clevenger is the lawyer for Ed Butowsky, who had recorded Sy Hersh on Jan. 25, 2017 saying that Hersh had a source in the FBI who said that they had the laptop and that Rich had provided material to WikiLeaks. Hersh never went public with this story, as he could not confirm it. However, Butowsky did, and Clevenger has pressed diligently for years to get the FBI material out. Of some note, he openly opposed the sudden Nov. 24 legal settlement between Fox News and Rich’s parents, and has suggested some possible coordination on the timing of the Dec. 9 admissions by the FBI.