In another bombshell from her upcoming book, Donna Brazile says that she was haunted by the mysterious murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was killed in July of 2016 purportedly during a botched robbery. In her memoir, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, she describes how she became increasingly paranoid about alleged Russian interference in the election and elements within her own party.
According to the Washington Post, she said that after Rich’s murder, she shut the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her. Brazile, who became interim head of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was ousted, also installed surveillance cameras in her home and worried that the Russians might have bugged her DNC executive suite with listening devices.
Wasserman Schultz was forced out after WikiLeaks published emails revealing how she and other officials stacked the deck against Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary process in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Surprisingly, Brazile claims that top Democratic officials “encouraged” her not to talk about the hacked emails but says she was told to take the matter seriously. That message was made clear, she said, during her visit to the White House in August 2016 for then-President Obama’s 55th birthday party. She says then-National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice and former attorney general Eric Holder separately pulled her aside to caution her “to take the Russian hacking seriously.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to remove references to suggestions that Rich was murdered as the result of his involvement in the release of emails from the DNC — allegations have not held up to scrutiny.
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