WASHINGTON – The Washington lawyer who's been on the hunt for slain DNC staffer Seth Rich's killer and is suing the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton for allegedly rigging the 2016 presidential primary against Bernie Sanders now is going after another high-powered Democrat: Donna Brazile.
Brazile knows the truth about Rich's mysterious death, attorney and Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman contends.
As WND reported, Burkman filed a lawsuit on Oct. 18 against the Democratic National Committee and scandal-ridden twice-failed Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in D.C. Superior Court.
The complaint is seeking financial compensation for Sanders' supporters who contributed to the Vermont senator's campaign by donating to the DNC. Burkman is also demanding the release of the DNC emaile server, which contained troves of Clinton campaign and DNC emails that were published by whistleblower organization WikiLeaks.
Burkman amended the suit Tuesday to include Donna Brazile, the former interim DNC chief, amid bombshell revelations she makes in her book.
There, she claims the DNC conspired to ensure Hillary Clinton won the primary over Bernie Sanders.
She also explains that she was frightened following the July 10, 2016, unsolved murder of Rich. In fact, she dedicated the book to Rich, whom she calls a "patriot."
As WND has reported, Rich, 27, was the DNC's voter expansion data director. He had accepted a position with Clinton's campaign just before his death.
In the summer of 2016, in the heat of a highly contentious presidential campaign, Rich was fatally shot in the back in Washington, D.C., near his apartment in an affluent neighborhood. Rich had been working for the DNC at a time when emails from the organization were provided to WikiLeaks for publication.
The series of emails revealed that high-ranking DNC officials and the Clinton team sabotaged Sanders' candidacy, used racist, anti-gay and sexist slurs when referring to constituents and were engaged in bizarre occult rituals.
The Metropolitan Police Department and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowers insist Rich was randomly killed during a "botched robbery." But others are doubtful because he was found with his wallet, credit cards and other valuables.
"Brazile writes that she was haunted by the still-unsolved murder of DNC data staffer Seth Rich and feared for her own life, shutting the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her and installing surveillance cameras at her home," the Washington Post reported. "She wonders whether Russians had placed a listening device in plants in the DNC executive suite."
Prior to replacing Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chief in July amid the email leaks, Brazille was a CNN contributor and a Hillary for America donor and was caught providing Clinton with questions that would later be asked of Clinton at a televised CNN town hall.
Brazile denied leaking the questions to Clinton in an interview with Fox News before the election. But in a March 17, 2017, column for Time magazine, she finally admitted doing so, saying it was a "mistake I will forever regret."
The release of the server and the discovery phase of the lawsuit would shed light on who killed Rich, Burkman, who established the independent Profiling Project to solve the Rich murder, told WND.
Brazile has provided incomplete information about what she knows, Burkman argues, but filing a lawsuit will force Brazile to say what she knows – under oath.
"If this were a random murder like police have maintained, why did Ms. Brazile fear for her own life?" he asked. "Brazile can clearly also offer critical information about what role the DNC [had in] Hillary Clinton's primary win."
"Brazile has openly admitted to liability in her book. She has admitted that she and others rigged the Democratic primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton. We are, therefore, expanding our complaint to include her.
"More importantly, she is now openly suggesting that the DNC may have killed Seth. Her comment that she felt compelled to draw her blinds and avoid the window is one of the most striking comments in modern American political history."
Burkman claims MPD officials are withholding key evidence from the public and obstructing the Rich investigation for political purposes. He's separately filed a lawsuit in May against the MPD, demanding the release of Rich's medical examiner's report, autopsy documents and ballistics reports, documents that are typically made public during murder investigations.
The Profiling Project concluded in June that Rich's murder was most likely "committed by a hired killer or serial murderer" because "the crime scene was very organized to the point of being sanitized."
Burkman is offering $105,000 and WikiLeaks is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer. One America News Network offered up $100,000, the Metropolitan Police Department $25,000 and businessman and investor Martin Shkreli $100,000.
The DNC, however, has offered no reward to help find the killer of its staffer. Instead, the DNC honored its murdered employee by dedicating a bike rack outside its headquarters in Rich's memory.
Rich's story has been largely ignored by establishment media. Those who have called attention to the suspicious circumstances surrounding the murder have been branded "conspiracy theorists," including Fox News host Sean Hannity
Yet, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, in an August 2016 interview, appeared to suggest that Rich was one of his sources.
The latest DNC email released by WikiLeaks was dated May 18, 2016 – just weeks before Rich was murdered.
In May, a private investigator alleged in an interview with WND that Brazile called police and Rich's family demanding to know why a the private eye was "snooping" into Rich's death.
The investigator, Rod Wheeler, was hired by the Rich family in March to find the DNC staffer's murderer, but was sent a "cease and desist" order by the family in May. Wheeler told WND that he was appalled the Rich family changed their mind about his investigation only after Brad Bauman, a Democratic political crisis consultant, was "assigned" to represent the Rich family.