FBI Wants To Slow Walk Seth Rich Investigation
2 min read
The FBI is asking a U.S. court to reverse its order that it produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer.
If the court does not, the bureau wants 66 years to produce the information.
Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer when he was killed on a street in Washington in mid-2016. No person has ever been arrested in connection to the murder.
U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee, ruled in September that the bureau must hand over information from the computer to Brian Huddleston, a Texas man who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the info.
The FBI’s assertion that the privacy interest Rich’s family members hold outweighed the public interest was rejected by Mazzant, who noted the bureau cited no relevant case law supporting the argument.
But the ruling was erroneous, U.S. lawyers said in a new filing.
The bureau shouldn’t have to produce the information because of FOIA exemptions for information that are compiled for law enforcement purposes and “could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source,” the lawyers said in a motion for reconsideration. Another exemption, which enables agencies to withhold information that would disclose law enforcement techniques also applies, they said.
“Given the Court’s findings that except for the information related to Seth Rich’s laptop withheld pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C) based on privacy interests, the FBI properly withheld or redacted all other information responsive to Huddleston’s requests, the production order seems inconsistent with the rest of the order,” the motion stated.
The FBI, after claiming it never possessed Rich’s laptop or any information from it, acknowledged in 2020 that it had thousands of files from the computer.
The bureau “is currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed,” the government said at the time.
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