Guccifer 2.0 claimed to Robbin Young that murdered DNC staff Seth Rich “was my whistleblower”

On April 11, Robbin Young tweeted how the FBI left a letter at her home requesting/demanding an interview. Young has found a lawyer and on April 12 private Twitter messages between her and Guccifer 2.0, where Guccifer 2.0 claimed that “Seth [Rich] was my whistleblower,” which would only make sense in the context of Rich being a DNC leaker sending information to Guccifer 2.0. However, Guccifer 2.0 has always claimed publicly that he obtained his information by hacking the DNC.

Seth Rich was murdered in front of his home in 2016. Speculation has been rife ever since then that he knew too much about something, and that he was assassinated.

Does the FBI’s immediate response to Robbin Young mean they are taking the Seth Rich information seriously? Or are they trying to pry more information about Guccifer 2.0 out of Robbin Young? As Robbin Young has said that she has received death threats as of late, is the FBI truly offering to protect her, or do they want to intimidate her from disputing the FBI’s narrative regarding Guccifer 2.0 being a hacker, being an entity that is represented by multiple people instead of one, and being a Russian? Young believes that Guccifer 2.0 is Romanian as he claims, is one individual and not many, and that Seth Rich was his leaker at the DNC.

Given the FBI’s interest in Robbin Young, the Republican members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees may be interested in calling her to testify before the hearings that the House and Senate have been convening over the past few weeks on the alleged hacking during the election. They may also direct the FBI to disclose their specific interest in Robbin Young, and to conduct a thorough investigation of the Seth Rich leaker claim and any other leakers at the DNC, including an investigation into Seth Rich’s murder and any ties to the DNC.

The FBI may be engaged in a more thorough analysis of Guccifer 2.0’s conduct, including a language analysis that encompasses the new text disclosed by Robbin Young, and the apparent attempt at misattributing his origins as being Russian when he intentionally added Russian metadata to his releases, such as adding Felix Dzerzhinsky as the modifying author, changing the native language of the document to Russian, and using a Russian language template. There were no other textual differences between Guccifer 2.0’s release of documents and Wikileaks release of those same documents, although Wikileaks documents were dated later than Guccifer 2.0’s, and Guccifer 2.0’s contained the name of Warren Flood as the creating author while Wikileaks’ contained the original author. Warren Flood’s job description at his firm is “helping campaigns, organizations, and companies implement winning strategies using data, analytics, and technology,” while Seth Rich was “voter expansion data director” at the DNC. It is unclear if they worked side-by-side.

Contact Steve Cunningham at stevecunningham@juno.com