Federal Judge Orders FBI To Hand Over Contents Of Laptop Belonging To Murdered DNC Employee Seth Rich
The FBI has been ordered to hand over all the content they currently possess in connection to the late Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich, which RadarOnline.com can confirm.
The surprising development came on Thursday, more than six years after Rich was murdered under mysterious circumstances in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood when a federal judge ordered the bureau to “produce the information it possesses related to Seth Rich’s laptop.”
According to court documents obtained and reviewed by RadarOnline.com, the federal judge’s order on Thursday was the result of a five-year court battle between the FBI and Ty Clevenger, an attorney representing Plaintiff Brian Huddleston.
Huddleston first submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FBI on September 1, 2017, in an effort to obtain information to help his investigation into Rich’s potential involvement in the DNC e-mail leaks that occurred in June 2016.
Although the FBI responded to Huddleston’s request two weeks later saying they were “unable to locate any responsive main files” in connection to Rich, it was later revealed the bureau was in possession of “over 20,000 pages of potentially relevant material.”
Of the 20,000 pages potentially relating to Rich, 1,596 pages were found to be directly related to the murdered DNC employee – although 1,496 of those were withheld due to a series of FOIA exemptions.
It was also revealed the FBI purposely withheld the content of Rich’s personal laptop due to privacy concerns for the late 27-year-old’s surviving family members – concerns the court rejected.
After years of legal back and forth between Huddleston and the FBI, the federal court ultimately ruled in Huddleston’s favor on Thursday.
“Accordingly, the Court finds the FBI improperly withheld this information under FOIA, and the Court is thus authorized to order its production,” the court’s order concluded.
The court’s order also comes more than five years since the FBI’s former director, Robert Mueller, confirmed Rich had no role in leaking the DNC’s emails in June 2016.
Despite Mueller’s findings, conspiracy theories began to circulate that Rich leaked the emails and was subsequently murdered as a result of the leaks.
“Almost immediately after his death, rumors began circulating that Seth Rich was responsible for publicly leaking thousands of DNC e-mails related to the involvement of Russian hackers in the presidential election of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” the background of Thursday’s court order explained.
“The Mueller Report found that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in a sweeping and systematic fashion, but it did not find sufficient evidence that President Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the election,” the order continued.
“The Mueller Report also found that the Russian government was responsible for publicly releasing the DNC e-mails online, and Seth Rich played no role in this scheme.”
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