Will Julian Assange and WikiLeaks Finally Tell the Truth About Seth Rich? – By Andy Kroll (Rolling Stone) / Nov 26 2019
In a new set of court filings, lawyers for Rich’s brother are battling to get a deposition with the imprisoned Assange
WASHINGTON — There is one person who can almost singlehandedly put to rest one of the more cruel conspiracy theories to infect American politics this century. That person is Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who currently sits in Britain’s Belmarsh prison. That theory claims Seth Rich, a 27-year-old Democratic Party staffer murdered in what police call a street robbery gone wrong, leaked tens of thousands of private emails to WikiLeaks in 2016, upending the U.S. presidential race and leading to the resignation of senior party officials.
In recent weeks, the legal team for Seth Rich’s older brother, Aaron, have escalated their efforts to force Assange and WikiLeaks to come clean with what they know about Seth Rich and the DNC hack. Aaron Rich filed a defamation lawsuit last year after he became a target of baseless theories involving Seth, and now his lawyers are seeking to use some novel legal maneuvers — including serving a subpoena on WikiLeaks via Twitter — to force Assange and his organization to provide documents and a deposition before the case potentially goes to trial next summer.
“WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are uniquely positioned to confirm the truth: that neither [Aaron] Rich nor his brother ever provided any documents to, or received any payments from WikiLeaks or its agents,” reads the most recent filing by Aaron Rich’s lawyers. “However, despite multiple attempts through various channels over more than a year, Mr. Rich has to date been unable to serve a subpoena on WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange — or even confirm an address or agent on whom to serve a subpoena on them — as the former does not have a known physical location for service of process and the latter had been under the protection of the Ecuadorian Embassy prior to his more recent incarceration in the United Kingdom.”
Aaron Rich’s lawyers declined to comment further on the motions. Twitter declined to comment on whether it would comply with a third-party subpoena intended for WikiLeaks. A U.K.-based lawyer for Assange, Jennifer Robinson, did not respond to a request for comment.
In August 2016, Assange gave a TV interview with a Dutch TV program. WikiLeaks had published thousands of stolen DNC emails, throwing the presidential race into chaos and leading to the resignations of top officials at the Democratic National Committee, including Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
In the Dutch TV interview, Assange demurred on how he obtained the DNC emails, then dropped a tantalizing hint. “There’s a 27-year-old who works for the DNC who was shot in the back, murdered, just a few weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.”
Continue to article: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/will-julian-assange-and-wikileaks-finally-tell-the-truth-about-seth-rich-918946/
Julian Assange gestures as he arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody . Police in London arrested WikiLeaks founder Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy Thursday for failing to surrender to the court in 2012, shortly after the South American nation revoked his asylum
Wikileaks Assange Arrested, London, United Kingdom – 11 Apr 2019
