During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in August 2017, Glenn Simpson was questioned about whether he tried to "assess the credibility" of sources behind information uncovered by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who compiled the dossier.

If we are to believe the transcript of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, released unexpectedly by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the search for a smoking gun in the dossier scandal may lead us to a dead body, at least according to Simpson's lawyer :

"Yes, but I'm not going to get into sourcing information," Simpson said. Asked again what "steps he took to verify their credibility," Simpson declined to answer. His lawyer, Joshua Levy, then intervened and said Simpson was just trying to protect his sources. "Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work," Levy said. The interview didn't pursue the line of questioning further.

Well, maybe somebody should pursue this hand grenade tossed in the middle of the room. Whoa! Somebody's already been killed as the result of the dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele from questionable Russian sources and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, and possibly used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the campaign of Hillary's opponent, Donald J. Trump?

As shocking as this revelation may be, it dovetails nicely with fear expressed for her safety by former DNC chair Donna Brazile. In a stunning interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos about her new book, Hacks, Brazile made cryptic references to murdered DNC I.T. staffer Seth Rich and revealed that afterward, she took the precautions one takes when one fears for his life.

So far, speculation about the unsolved murder of Seth Rich have been dismissed as right-wing conspiracy theories, but Brazile's references to him in the light of all that has come out about WikiLeaks, the Fusion GPS dossier, and Hillary's purchase of the DNC that rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders may be a missing piece of this whole puzzle.

We have the unsolved murder of a former DNC staffer, Seth Rich; a former DNC chair who feared for her life; and a statement by the lawyer for the founder of Fusion GPS suggesting that someone has been killed over the dossier. Would it be too much to connect those dots?

Brazile, according to Newsweek, in a piece titled "DNC's Donna Brazile Dedicated Her Book to 'Patriot' Seth Rich, Whose Death Made Her Fear for Own Life," dedicated her book in part to Rich:

A new book by Donna Brazile, the former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), has been making headlines for its controversial claims about the 2016 presidential election and the Hillary Clinton campaign. But the provocative points start even before the first chapter, as Brazile reportedly dedicated the book in part to Seth Rich, the DNC staffer whose murder launched a conspiracy theory. Axios reported on Sunday that the book's dedication reads, "In loving memory of my father, Lionel Brazile[,] Sr.; my beloved sister, Sheila Brazioutlanle; my fearless uncles Nat, Floyd, and Douglas; Harlem's finest, my aunt Lucille; my friend and mentor, David Kaufmann; my DNC colleague and patriot, Seth Rich; and my beloved Pomeranian, Chip Joshua Marvin Brazile (Booty Wipes). I miss y'all." ... Rich appears elsewhere in Brazile's book, as the Post [italics here and elsewhere removed –ed.] reported earlier in the weekend. She wrote that Rich's murder haunted her and that she'd installed surveillance cameras at her home and would keep the blinds in her office window closed so she could not be seen by snipers, according to the Post. Brazile talked about Rich on ABC News's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. She told the host about her critics: "They don't know what it was like to be over the DNC during this hacking. They don't know what it's like to bury a child. I did: Seth Rich."

Why did Donna Brazile fear for her life after Seth's Rich unsolved murder? Were these cryptic references a way of warning those who she feared might do her harm that more would be revealed after her possible demise? Only Donna Brazile can elaborate, and it is doubtful she will at this point.

Rich's murder remains a mystery, with no apparent motive – not even a robbery gone wrong. As the Daily Caller Investigative Group observes in a piece titled "Donna Brazile Has a Theory about Who Killed Seth Rich":

From her book []Hacks[] [italics added –ed.]: I felt some responsibility for Seth Rich's death. I didn't bring him into the DNC, but I helped keep him there working on voting rights. With all I knew now about the Russians' hacking, I could not help but wonder if they had played some part in his unsolved murder. Besides that, racial tensions were high that summer and I worried that he was murdered for being white on the wrong side of town. [My friend] Elaine expressed her doubts about that, and I heard her. The FBI said that they did not see any Russian fingerprints there. Brazile repeatedly returns to the subject of being haunted by Rich's murder, even though other Democrats have pounced on anyone who suggested that the murder was anything other than a robbery gone wrong. The DNC data staffer was killed days before Wiki[L]eaks began publishing its emails, and his valuables were not taken.

The Russians did not provide WikiLeaks with any purloined emails or other documents, according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. As Fox News reported on Assange's interview with Sean Hannity:

Wiki[L]eaks founder Julian Assange denied Thursday that hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta were stolen and passed to his organization by Russian state actors. "Our source is not the Russian government," Assange told []The Sean Hannity Show [italics added –ed.].[] "So in other words, let me be clear," Hannity asked, "Russia did not give you the Podesta documents or anything from the DNC?" "That's correct," Assange responded.

Seth Rich, being a DNC I.T. staffer, if he did not provide the documents and emails to WikiLeaks himself, might have been in a position to know who did and how. We do know that the DNC denied the FBI access to the server that was allegedly hacked by the Russians. Now we have a possible link among Seth Rich, his death, and a dossier paid for in part by the DNC.

The Democratic National Committee "rebuffed" a request from the FBI to examine its computer services after it was allegedly hacked by Russia during the 2016 election, a senior law enforcement official told CNN Thursday. "The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated," a senior law enforcement official told CNN.

Perhaps Donna Brazile and Glenn Simpson know more about what the DNC was trying to hide from the FBI. Her shocking revelations in her book and the statement by Simpson's lawyer may be the tip of a rather large and unnerving iceberg.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.