Mueller assessed WikiLeaks role in fueling Seth Rich conspiracy theory
Special counsel Robert Mueller focused a portion of his final report on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange making false statements about slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich and the theft of emails from Democratic officials.
Rich was killed in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016, in what police have described as a botched robbery. But Rich's death quickly became the subject of conspiracy theories claiming he was killed in a politically motivated hit job for leaking stolen emails to WikiLeaks.
The redacted Mueller report, released Thursday, said WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, "made several public statements apparently designed to obscure the source of the materials that WikiLeaks was releasing."
Starting in the summer of 2016, "Assange and WikiLeaks made a number of statements about Seth Rich, a former DNC staff member who was killed in July 2016," Mueller's report said. "The statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails."
Mueller described specific instances, including an Aug. 25 tweet from WikiLeaks that said, "ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich."
An Aug. 25, 2016, interview with Assange was also cited.
"Assange was asked in an interview, 'Why are you so interested in Seth Rich's killer?' and responded, 'We're very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged Wikileaks sources,'" the Mueller report said.
"The interviewer responded to Assange's statement by commenting, 'I know you don't want to reveal your source, but it certainly sounds like you're suggesting a man who leaked information to WikiLeaks was then murdered,'" the Mueller report continued. "Assange replied, 'If there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication, and that person has been murdered in suspicious circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that the two are connected. But it is a very serious matter ... that type of allegation is very serious, as it's taken very seriously by us.'"
Mueller's report claimed the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, the GRU, stole Democratic emails and distributed them through two GRU-operated fronts — the DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 websites. Mueller further claimed “the GRU units transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the [Hillary] Clinton Campaign to WikiLeaks.”
DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 were the Russian conduits for communication with WikiLeaks, according to Mueller.
Mueller also alleged that “GRU officers used both the DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 personas to communicate with WikiLeaks through Twitter private messaging and through encrypted channels, including possibly through WikiLeaks's private communication system.”
Despite efforts by the GRU and WikiLeaks to conceal their communications, Mueller said "it is clear that the stolen DNC and [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta documents were transferred from the GRU to WikiLeaks."
The broader U.S. intelligence community also concluded in a report in January 2017 that Russian operatives were behind the hacking of emails from Democratic officials before passing them along to WikiLeaks to publish.
