A Donald Trump-supporting Washington DC police officer has been accused of interfering with an investigation into the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.
Speaking exclusively to Rolling Stone , former federal prosecutor Deborah Sines alleged that now-former Metropolitan Police Department Officer Doug Berlin sought to undermine the probe by leaking the name of a key witness to the attack which saw Rich shot twice in the back during a suspected robbery in DC’s Bloomingdale neighbourhood on 10 July 2016.
Rich’s death sparked a slew of conspiracy theories among pro-Trump and far-right groups that baselessly claimed he was a whistleblower and was assassinated by the DNC for stealing and leaking thousands of documents to Wikileaks during the 2016 presidential campaign — theories that were debunked by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.
Mr Mueller’s report, published in 2019, found that Russian military intelligence was responsible for hacking the DNC and obtaining emails that Hillary Clinton sent from her private server. But in 2017, a year after Rich’s death, Ms Sines reportedly learned that the name of her only witness to Rich’s killing was leaked to Arkansas podcaster Matt Couch.
Ms Sines was tipped about Mr Berlin’s Twitter feed, where he recklessly fueled bogus theorists calling Rich a hero for “exposing a corruption bigger than Watergate in the DNC,” Rolling Stone reported. An internal affairs investigation by DC police later found Mr Berlin, who was not working on the Rich case, accessed internal files and told Mr Couch about the witness, the outlet said.
Mr Berlin allegedly first leaked information about a witness on his Twitter profile @ThinBlueLR. He also allegedly told a fellow cop that he believed “the DNC whacked [Rich.]”
He later went on The Matt Couch Show podcast to speak under the pseudonym “Blue,” and said that the witness was a woman who had seen two Black men running away from the crime scene, Rolling Stone reported.
On his podcast, Mr Couch admitted to calling and knocking on the witness’s door, before doxing her. He went on to accuse the witness of having worked in the CIA and of taking part in the supposed cover-up.
He went as far as saying that he had “no remorse” for the family, and accused them of not coming forward with information about the leak.
Ms Sines told Rolling Stone she was shocked to learn that the name of her witness was leaked and quickly figured out the information was given to Couch by somebody from within the force.
After being tipped about Mr Berlin’s Twitter profile and his link to the Matt Couch podcast, she filed a complaint with Internal Affairs.
Mr Berlin was briefly suspended but then decided to resign from the force claiming it “violated his First Amendment rights,” for not allowing him to speak freely about his political views — namely actively engaging in offensive and combative discourse on social media.
The Rich family suffered attacks from conspiracy theorists as Fox media pundits repeatedly revived discredited claims about the circumstances surrounding their son’s death. In 2017, the network had to detract after airing uncorroborated and later debunked reports by contributor Rod Wheeler of links between Rich and Wikileaks.
Ms Sines retired from the US attorney’s office in 2018. The Rich case has yet to be solved.
