First, the strange tale of Peter Smith, 81.

• He was a GOP donor and opposition researcher. He was trying to locate the 30,000 emails that Hillary had “bleached” in defiance of a Congressional subpoena.
• In May, ten days after he gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal where he explained his strategy of reaching out to hackers (five hacker groups claimed to have the Clinton emails), he was found dead in his hotel room with a plastic bag tied over his head, and a helium tank to aid the asphyxiation process.
• Per the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal’s lead reporter initially told people that Smith had died of natural causes – but that was false:
  

  …the lead reporter on the stories said on a podcast he had no reason to believe the death was the result of foul play and that Smith likely had died of natural causes.

  However, the Chicago Tribune obtained a Minnesota state death record filed in Olmsted County saying Smith committed suicide…

• And now, even the suicide story is in doubt.
• Per the Chicago Tribune, Smith was staying at a hotel “near the Mayo Clinic”. (Mayo refuses to confirm whether he was a patient.) Smith was expected to check out, the day they found his body. The day before, he told a hotel worker “Tomorrow is my last day” – which seems like it could apply to either his stay, or his life.
• Smith was found with a suicide note, which claimed he was facing a serious illness and stated that “No foul play, whatsoever” was to blame. Some find a note like that suspicious in itself.
• Friends and associates say they had no idea of Smith being ill or planning a suicide.
• This includes Charles Ortel, a fellow researcher into Clinton corruption, who spoke with Smith the day before the alleged suicide.
  

  “He may have been a fantastic actor but I certainly didn’t leave that phone call saying, ‘oh sh*t, the guy’s at the end of his rope,’” Charles Ortel…told The Daily Caller…

  “This does not seem like a settled story. It made perfect sense to me he might have died of natural causes, but little chance he would have killed himself,” Ortel said.

  …Ortel knew Smith personally. “We had countless discussions,” Ortel recalled of his relationship with Smith. “He was using his unique decades of experience in politics to offer me advice how to expose the Clinton Foundation.”

Next and more recent, Klaus Eberwein, 50.

• Allegedly, he shot himself in the head at a Quality Inn near Miami.
• Per Miami Herald:
  

  A supporter of former Haitian President Michel Martelly, Eberwein served as director general of the government’s economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social, better known as FAES…

  [a childhood friend and business partner] said he last spoke to Eberwein, 50, two weeks ago and he was in good spirits…

  During and after his government tenure, Eberwein faced allegations of fraud and corruption on how the agency he headed administered funds…

  Eberwein was scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission…

• So, what’s the Clinton connection? Some far-out sites say that he was a critic of the Clinton Foundation’s operations in Haiti, and was set to testify specifically about Clinton Foundation wrongdoing.
• I want to see better reporting on the connection before I narrate it as “truth”. But as a possibility, it seemed worth mentioning.

Addendum: I want to make clear that I’m not suicidal, never have been, and never will be. In the unlikely event that I ever “commit suicide”, or “have an accident”, there should be automatic and deep suspicion of foul play.

Inspired by Judi McLeod’s timely article. She reminds us of another strange case from 2016, John Ashe – although this one was an alleged exercise accident:

…disgraced UN official John Ashe… — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon [late June 2016] in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. [ed: an initial falsehood about natural causes, same pattern as Peter Smith] But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.

Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.

Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. (Ng was not charged with any crime.)

Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fundraising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton.

One source told me, “During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed.”

I do believe in coincidences – which is why I still have not committed, for example, to the theory that Seth Rich (of the DNC email leaks) had to be a political murder. But the Clintons, over the years, do seem to get a LOT of these coincidental deaths of people who might have something on them.