Lawsuit outs Ellen Ratner as source for Seth Rich information

45. Mr. Butowsky stumbled into the RCH crosshairs after Ellen Rattner [sic], a news analyst for Fox News and the White House correspondent for Talk Media News, contacted him in the Fall of 2016 about a meeting she had with Mr. Assange. [Update: A Fox News spokeswoman informed LawFlog in a July 16, 2019 email that Ms. Ratner left the network in January of 2019]. Ms. Rattner’s brother, the late Michael Rattner, was an attorney who had represented Mr. Assange. According to Ms. Rattner, she made a stop in London during a return flight from Berlin, and she met with Mr. Assange for approximately six hours in the Ecuadorean embassy. Ms. Rattner said Mr. Assange told her that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron, were responsible for releasing the DNC emails to Wikileaks [Correction: Ms. Ratner only mentioned Seth]. Ms. Rattner said Mr. Assange wanted the information relayed to Seth’s parents, as it might explain the motive for Seth’s murder.

46. Upon her return to the United States, Ms. Rattner asked Mr. Butowsky to contact the Rich family and relay the information from Mr. Assange, apparently because Ms. Rattner did not want her involvement to be made public. In the two months that followed, Mr. Butowsky did not attempt to contact the Rich family, but he grew increasingly frustrated as the DNC and #Resistance “journalists” blamed the Russian government for the email leak. On December 16, 2016, Mr. Butowsky sent a text message to Ms. Ratner:

BUTOWSKY [7:10 a.m.]: “Why don’t [sic] you speaking up about email hack?”

RATTNER [9:28 a.m.]: “I have”

Ms. Rattner subsequently told Mr. Butowsky that she had informed Bill Shine, who was then the co-president of Fox News, about her meeting with Mr. Assange in London. Ms. Rattner also informed Fox News producer Malia Zimmerman about her meeting with Mr. Assange.

47. On December 17, 2016, at the instigation of Ms. Rattner, Mr. Butowsky finally contacted Joel and Mary Rich, the parents of Seth, and he relayed the information about Ms. Rattner’s meeting with Mr. Assange. During that conversation, Mr. Rich told Mr. Butowsky that he already knew that his sons were involved in the DNC email leak, but he and his wife just wanted to know who murdered Seth. Mr. Rich said he was reluctant to go public with Seth’s and Aaron’s role in leaking the emails because “we don’t want anyone to think our sons were responsible for getting Trump elected.” Mr. Rich said he did not have enough money to hire a private investigator, so Mr. Butowsky offered to pay for one. Mr. Rich accepted the offer and thanked Mr. Butowsky in an email.

48. On December 29, 2016 at 1:51 p.m., Mr. Butowsky sent an email to Ms. Rattner from his iPad: “If the person you met with truly said what he did, is their [sic] a reason you we aren’t reporting it ?” At 3:48 p.m. that afternoon, Ms. Rattner responded as follows: “because— it was a family meeting—- I would have to get his permission– will ask his new lawyer, my sister-in-law.”

The complaint also mentions an interesting development in my ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI. The feds claimed they had no information pertaining to Seth Rich, but they appear to be changing their tune. Shortly after Attorney General William Barr announced plans to declassify documents related to the Russian Collusion Hoax, the FBI’s attorney informed me that new documents were being processed. I should receive them not later than July 22, 2019. The DNC’s objections to our subpoenas for “Russian hacking’ information are also due on July 22, 2019, and production is due on August 8, 2019.

The more I’ve reviewed the Seth Rich case, the more I’m convinced of its central role in the whole Russian Collusion Hoax. I believe DNC officials knew that the emails would become public as the result of an internal leak, and they knew that the emails would be very damaging, so they attempted to turn the tables by pointing fingers at Donald Trump and the Russians. Hopefully we will know more by next week.

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