The Twitter conversation, conducted via direct messages, purports to reveal Rich as the primary leaker of the DNC e-mails that proved highly disruptive during the 2016 presidential election. There is no substantiation to these claims.

Robbin Young, who posed fully nude for Playboy in the 1980s, is the one who released the chat logs. She says on her website that she followed Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter following the DNC leaks.  She considers him to be a "hero and a friend."

(U.S. officials have alleged that Guccifer 2.0 is the creation of Russian hackers seeking to interfere with American politics. Guccifer 2.0 has denied being a Russian front).