This story was updated after we were contacted by the Chicago law firm representing Joel and Mary Rich.

They deny the claims by Butowsky.

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Ed Butowsky, the man who offered to assist the family of Seth Rich with the cost of hiring a private investigator, told the Gateway Pundit that he held a December 2016 conversation with the father of the slain staffer.

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Butowsky further stated that the family was deeply concerned with their son being remembered for helping to get President Donald Trump elected.

Speaking to Butowsky by phone on Thursday evening, he told the Gateway Pundit that during a conversation with Joel Rich on December 17, 2016.

“They know — we all know,” Butowksy said.

In an audio recording that I previously obtained, private investigator Rod Wheeler explained that Seth’s brother, Aaron Rich, had tried to block Wheeler from looking at Seth’s computer — even though there could be evidence on it.

Wheeler said that Seth’s girlfriend told him that Aaron Rich had possession of Seth’s cell phones, but Aaron denied it and said “we’re not going to worry about the cell phones.”

Aaron also blocked Wheeler from finding out about who was at a party Seth attended the night of the murder.

“All I want you to do is work on the botched robbery theory and that’s it,” Aaron told Wheeler, according to Wheeler’s claim on the audio. Wheeler said that Seth’s father Joel “does not appear to have any hidden agenda.”

“He said no, he said I have his computer, meaning him,” Wheeler said. “I said, well can I look at it?…He said, what are you looking for? I said anything that could indicate if Seth was having problems with someone. He said no, I already checked it. Don’t worry about it.”

Aaron Rich works for Northrup Grumman, which was named as the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015, as a lead software developer.

“It’s not just hacking and defending, there’s a lot more to it,” a cyber software engineer at Northrup Grumman says in a video on the company’s website.

An additional leaked phone conversation I previously obtained featured award winning journalist Sy Hersh confirming that Rich had made contact with WikiLeaks.

“There are no DNC or Podesta emails that exist beyond May 21 or 22, last email from either one of those groups. What the report says is that some time in late Spring… he makes contact with WikiLeaks, that’s in his computer,” he says. “Anyway, they found what he had done is that he had submitted a series of documents — of emails, of juicy emails, from the DNC.”

“All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I’m sure dozens of emails, and said ‘I want money.’ Later, WikiLeaks did get the password, he had a DropBox, a protected DropBox,” he said. They got access to the DropBox.”

Hersh also states that Rich had concerns about something happening to him, and had shared the DropBox with trusted associates incase anything happened to him.

“The word was passed, according to the NSA report, he also shared this DropBox with a couple of friends, so that ‘if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problems,’” he added. “WikiLeaks got access before he was killed.”

Audio tape of Seymour Hersh discussing WikiLeaks DNC leaks and Seth Rich https://t.co/STp9u7Vtbn h/t @CassandraRules — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 1, 2017

In an email exchange that had been previously provided to me exclusively, Butowsky pleaded with Hersh to go to Congress with what he knew.

“I am curious why you haven’t approached the house committee telling them what you were read by your FBI friend related to Seth Rich that you in turn read to me. Based on all your work, it appears that you care about the truth. Even though, as you said you couldn’t get a second, shouldn’t you tell them so they could use their powers to determine the truth?” Butowsky asked.

In a bizarre response completely contradicting what Hersh is heard saying on the audio recording, he denies having any inside knowledge of the case.

“ed –you have a lousy memory…i was not read anything by my fbi friend..i have no firsthand information and i really wish you would stop telling others information that you think i have…please stop relaying information that you do not have right…and that i have no reason to believe is accurate…” Hersh wrote.

Desperate to find the truth about what happened, Bukowsky continues to plead with the journalist to go forward.

The Washington Times wrote more about this this week.

“I know it isn’t first hand knowledge but you clearly said, my memory is perfect, that you had a friend at the FBI who read / told you what was in the file on Seth Rich and I wonder why you aren’t helping your country and sharing that information on who it was?” Bukowsky responds.

Rich was shot in the back in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016, near his home while he was on the phone with his girlfriend — 12 days before the publication of the DNC emails by WikiLeaks. The police initially ruled that it was a botched robbery — but his wallet, watch, and necklace were still on his person when he was discovered by police.

The report from the Washington Times points out that “the same day Seth Rich was murdered, an FBI agent’s car was burglarized in the same vicinity. Included in the FBI equipment stolen was a 40 caliber Glock 22. D.C. Metro police issued a press release, declaring that the theft of the FBI agent’s car occurred between 5 and 7 a.m. Two weeks later, the FBI changed the time of the theft to between 12 a.m. and 2 a.m. Was the FBI gun used to shoot Seth Rich? Neither the FBI nor the Metro police will discuss.”

Last July, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) — a 30 member group made up of well respected former experts from the National Security Administration, tech companies and other intelligence agencies put out a report asserting that the DNC emails came from a leak, not a hack.

VIPS stated that “forensic studies of ‘Russian hacking’ into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.”

Additionally, the former intelligence operatives detail how the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0,” and assert that “the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive evidence of a transfer of a ‘Russian hack’ to WikiLeaks is because there was no such transfer.”

Among those who signed on to the report is William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, Larry C Johnson, who is retired from the CIA & State Department, Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst at SIGINT Automation Research Center of the NSA, and many more.

Though Assange has infamously expressed interest in Rich, he has always maintained that WikiLeaks will never name a source. WikiLeaks has offered a $20,000 reward for Rich’s murderer however, and has retweeted articles that asserted he was their source without providing any additional comment.

UPDATE: We altered this article after we received a letter from the family attorney. Nothing that we have ever reported on this story has had malicious intent. Our heart goes out to the family. We hope this case is solved for the sake of the family.