Seth Rich

On July 9, 2019, a Yahoo! News article stated that an alleged Russian Foreign Intelligence Service bulletin dated July 13, 2016, was the original source of the conspiracy theory. An analysis by the Washington Post disputed the conclusion while crediting the report for highlighting the roles played by InfoWars, FoxNews, and Hannity in promoting the misinformation.

Rich's parents condemned the conspiracy theorists and said that those individuals were exploiting their son's death for political gain, and their spokesperson called the conspiracy theorists "disgusting sociopaths". They requested a retraction and apology from Fox News after the network promoted the conspiracy theory, and sent a cease and desist letter to the investigator Fox News used. The investigator stated that he had no evidence to back up the claims which Fox News attributed to him. Fox News issued a retraction, but did not apologize or publicly explain what went wrong. In response, the Rich family sued Fox News in March 2018 for having engaged in "extreme and outrageous conduct" by fabricating the story defaming their son and thereby intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them. The judge initially dismissed the suit in August 2018, but the court of appeals later allowed the case to proceed.

According to the Mueller Report, WikiLeaks had received an email containing an encrypted file named "wk dnc link I .txt.gpg" from the Guccifer 2.0 GRU persona on July 14, which was four days after Seth Rich died. In April 2018, Twitter direct messages revealed that even as Assange was suggesting publicly that WikiLeaks had obtained emails from Seth Rich, Assange was trying to obtain more emails from Guccifer 2.0, who was at the time already suspected of being linked to Russian intelligence. BuzzFeed described the messages as "the starkest proof yet that Assange knew a likely Russian government hacker had the Democrat leaks he wanted. And they reveal the deliberate bad faith with which Assange fed the groundless claims that Rich was his source, even as he knew the documents' origin." Mike Gottlieb, a lawyer for Rich's brother, noted that WikiLeaks received the file of stolen documents from the Russian hackers on July 14, four days after Rich was shot. Gottlieb described the chronology as "damning".

In March 2018, Rich's family filed a lawsuit against Fox News, Fox reporter Malia Zimmerman, and Fox contributor Ed Butowsky, for publishing a news report about Seth Rich. The suit alleges that the report fueled conspiracy theories about Rich's death and caused the family emotional distress. Judge George B. Daniels dismissed the lawsuit in August 2018, ruling that, although it was reasonable for plaintiffs to believe their son's death was being used for political purposes, the plaintiffs failed to allege "intentional infliction" of emotional distress on the part of defendants, as that standard is determined under New York state law: "defamatory statements to news outlets 'fall well short of meeting the high standards for extreme and outrageous conduct.' They would have had to prove more extreme and persistent distress under the law." The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the dismissal in September 2019 saying, "the Riches plausibly alleged what amounted to a campaign of emotional torture."

Also in March 2018, Aaron Rich filed a lawsuit against Butowsky, Couch, America First Media, and The Washington Times for suggesting he had played a role in the purported theft of emails from the DNC. On October 1, 2018, as part of a settlement they had reached with Aaron Rich, The Washington Times retracted the relevant articles and issued an apology to Rich and his family.

In April 2018, the BBC broadcast the documentary, Conspiracy Files: Murder in Washington examining the death of Rich and subsequent theories about the death.

The Rich family accepted the pro bono public relations services of Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman in September 2016. The Rich family and Burkman held a joint press conference on the murder in November 2016. In January 2017, Burkman launched an advertising campaign in Northwest D.C. searching for information regarding Seth's death. This included billboard advertisements and canvassing with flyers. In late February, Burkman told media outlets he had a lead that the Russian government was involved in Rich's death, and the Rich family then distanced itself from Burkman. On March 19, 2017, Rich's brother, Aaron, started a GoFundMe campaign to try to raise $200,000 for private investigation, public outreach activities, and a reward fund.

The Rich family was approached by Ed Butowsky (a friend of Trump advisor Steve Bannon and a frequent Fox News contributor), who recommended having Fox News contributor and former homicide detective Rod Wheeler investigate Seth's murder. Butowsky said Wheeler had been recommended to him. The family gave Wheeler permission to investigate, though they did not hire him. When questioned by CNN, Butowsky denied involvement in the case, but later admitted he was involved and had offered to pay Wheeler's fees. After Wheeler asserted links between Rich and Wikileaks in a Fox affiliate interview on May 15, 2017—an assertion he later backpedaled from—the family spokesman said that the family regretted working with Wheeler. Wheeler then sued Fox News on August 1, 2017, for mental anguish and emotional distress, alleging that he had been misquoted in a story that was then published on the urging of Trump.

On May 15, 2017, Fox 5 DC (WTTG) reported the uncorroborated and later largely retracted claims by Rod Wheeler, a Fox News contributor and former homicide detective, that there was evidence Seth Rich had contacted WikiLeaks and that law enforcement were covering this up; claims that were never independently verified by Fox. The next day, Fox News published a lead story on its website and provided extensive coverage on its cable news channel about what it later said were Wheeler's uncorroborated claims about the murder of Seth Rich; in the lead story Fox News removed from their website a few days later, they stated that Wheeler's claims had been "corroborated by a federal investigator who spoke to Fox News." In reporting these claims, the Fox News report re-ignited conspiracy theories about the killing. According to NPR, within a day of the original Fox report, "Google searches for Rich had overtaken searches for James Comey, even amid continuous news about the former FBI director's conversations with Trump." The Washington Post' s Callum Borchers noted Fox News chose to lead with this story at a time when most other media outlets were covering Donald Trump's disclosure of classified information to Russia.

Other news organizations revealed Wheeler was a Donald Trump supporter, a paid Fox News contributor, and according to NBC News had "developed a reputation for making outlandish claims, such as one appearance on Fox News in 2007 in which he warned that underground networks of pink pistol-toting lesbian gangs were raping young women". The Washington Post noted it is "rare for a news organization to have such a close relationship with the people it is covering", as Wheeler was "playing three roles at once: as a Fox source, as a paid contributor to the network and as a supposedly independent investigator of the murder". When Wheeler appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News shows, these multiple roles were not disclosed to viewers. After Wheeler's Fox News interview on May 15, 2017, Brad Bauman, a communications professional and spokesman for the Rich family, said the family was asking Fox News and the Fox affiliate to retract their reports and apologize for damaging their son's legacy.

On May 19, 2017, an attorney for the Rich family sent a cease and desist letter to Wheeler.

Fox News issued a retraction of the story on May 23, 2017 and removed the original article, and did not apologize or specify what went wrong or how it did so. Despite this, Hannity, who pushed the theory, remained unapologetic, saying "I retracted nothing" and "I am not going to stop trying to find the truth." In their May 23 statement, Fox News said, "The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed." Media ethics writer Kelly McBride criticized the retraction as "woefully inadequate", writing that it did not specify exactly what was inaccurate, or provide correct information in place of the retracted story.

On August 1, 2017, Rod Wheeler, the private investigator hired by Butowsky who was the first to claim links between Seth Rich's murder and the DNC hack on Fox, but who later appeared to retract his claims, filed a lawsuit (Case 1:17-cv-05807 Southern District of New York), in which 21st Century Fox, the Fox News Channel, Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky are named as defendants, stating that quotes attributed to him in the original Fox News piece were fabricated. The lawsuit also alleges that the fabricated quotes were included in the Fox News story at the urging of the Trump White House.

In May 2017, Seth Rich's brother Aaron Rich issued a statement saying, "We simply want to find his killers and grieve. Instead, we are stuck having to constantly fight against non-facts, baseless allegations, and general stupidity to defend my brother's name and legacy."

His parents authored a piece in The Washington Post on May 23, 2017 titled: "We're Seth Rich's parents. Stop politicizing our son's murder," in which they wrote:

The murder of Seth Rich occurred on Sunday, July 10, 2016, at 4:20 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Rich died more than ​1  ⁄2 hours after receiving two gunshot wounds to the back. He was murdered by unknown perpetrators for unknown reasons, but police suspected he had been the victim of an attempted robbery.

The 27-year-old Rich was an employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and his murder spawned several right-wing conspiracy theories, including the false claim that Rich had been involved with the leaked DNC emails in 2016, contradicted by the law enforcement branches that investigated the murder. It was also contradicted by the July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents for hacking the e-mail accounts and networks of Democratic Party officials and by the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion the leaked DNC emails were part of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Fact-checking websites like PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck.org stated that the theories were false and unfounded. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post wrote that the promotion of these conspiracy theories was an example of fake news.

On Sunday, July 10, 2016, at 4:20 a.m., Rich was shot about a block from his apartment at the southwest corner of Flagler Place and W Street Northwest in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

In September 2016, Rich's parents and girlfriend appeared on the syndicated television show Crime Watch Daily to speak about the murder case. In October 2016, a plaque and bike rack outside the DNC headquarters were dedicated to Rich's memory. In February 2017, the Beth El Synagogue in Omaha named after Rich an existing scholarship that helps Jewish children attend summer camps.

On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks announced a $20,000 reward for information about Rich's murder leading to a conviction, which was subsequently increased to $125,000. Rich's family said they were unable to verify this reward offer. WikiLeaks stated that this offer should not be taken as implying Rich had been involved in leaking information to them.

In November 2016, Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman said he was personally offering a $100,000 reward in addition to those announced by the police department and WikiLeaks, and he added another $5,000 to his offer in December and another $25,000 in January. Burkman said he hoped the money would help "get to the truth of what happened here and will either debunk the conspiracy theories or validate them."

Political conspiracy theories and racially charged comments started to appear on social media the day after Rich's death. Within days, right-wing conspiracy theories began circulating, including false claims that his murder was connected to the DNC email leak of 2016, or the FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

A post on Twitter before Rich's memorial service spread the idea that his killing was a political assassination. Subsequently, the conspiracy theory was spread on the subreddit /r/The Donald, and on July 29, 2016, the website Heat Street reported on these Reddit posts. Reddit users attempted to tie the homicide to prior "Clinton Body Count" conspiracy theories. The conspiracy theory was later popularized by Donald Trump political adviser Roger Stone via his Twitter account.

According to British journalist Duncan Campbell, the Russian intelligence agency, GRU, tried to implicate Rich as the source of the stolen DNC emails, in order to draw attention away from themselves as the real perpetrators of the theft. Datestamps on the DNC files were altered to show the data had been obtained on July 5, 2016, five days before Rich's death, and the time zone was changed to Eastern Time, within which Washington, D.C., falls. Guccifer 2.0, the alleged GRU front that provided the emails to Wikileaks, then reported that Rich had been their source. Based partly on their acceptance of the false dates, some experts then concluded that the emails had been copied in the DNC offices, and had not been hacked from outside.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, fueled the speculation in an interview with Nieuwsuur published on August 9, 2016, which touched on the topic of risks faced by WikiLeaks' sources. Unbidden, Assange brought up the case of Seth Rich. When asked directly whether Rich was a source, Assange nodded, then said "we don't comment on who our sources are". Subsequent statements by WikiLeaks emphasized that the organization was not naming Rich as a source, as they do with other leaks. It subsequently came to light that WikiLeaks communicated with the Trump campaign over other issues, casting doubt on Assange's motives.

Later that day, Wheeler told CNN he had no evidence that Rich had contacted Wikileaks. Wheeler claimed that Fox had presented his quotes misleadingly and that he only learned about the possible existence of the evidence from a Fox News reporter. Despite this, Sean Hannity's show and Fox & Friends continued to promote the conspiracy theory for the remainder of the week. On May 18, 2016, Hannity's guest on the show was Jay Sekulow who said that Rich's killing "... undercuts this whole Russia argument;" neither one mentioned that Sekulow had just been hired as one of Trump's lead lawyer in the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Geraldo Rivera took part in spreading the conspiracy. Hannity had on his program Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, who said the organization filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documents from Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel E. Bowser, and from the Metropolitan Police. Sean Hannity furthermore promoted the uncorroborated claims of Kim Dotcom, a New Zealand resident sought by the United States on fraud charges who claimed without evidence that Rich had been in contact with him before his death. Fox News host Julie Roginsky was critical of the conspiracy theory peddlers, stating on Twitter and on her television show: "The exploitation of a dead man whose family has begged conspiracy theorists to stop is really egregious. Please stop." Fox News was also criticized by conservative outlets, such as the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Red State, and conservative columnists, such as Jennifer Rubin, Michael Gerson, and John Podhoretz. In September 2017, NPR noted that Fox News had yet to apologize for its false story or explain what went wrong; "When a story of this scale crumbles, most news organizations feel obligated to explain what happened and why. Not so far at Fox."

The same venues that fomented the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory helped to promulgate the Seth Rich murder conspiracy theories, and each shared similar features. Both were promoted by individuals subscribing to far-right politics, and by campaign officials and individuals appointed to senior-level national security roles by Donald Trump. After prior coordination on Facebook, each theory was spread on Twitter by automated bots using a branded hashtag, with the goal of becoming a trending topic. Both the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and the Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory were spread in the subreddit forum /r/The_Donald. In both conspiracy theories, the promoters attempted to shift the burden of proof — asking others to attempt to disprove their claims, without citing substantiated evidence. Slate' s Elliot Hannon called the claims about Seth Rich a "PizzaGate-like conspiracy theory surrounding Rich's death", The Huffington Post described it as "the 'alt-right' idiocy of Pizzagate all over again", NPR's David Folkenflik said Fox News coverage of it "evokes the pizza-gate terrible allegations utterly unfounded", and Margaret Sullivan wrote for The Washington Post: "The Seth Rich lie has become the new Comet Ping Pong ... Crazy, baseless and dangerous."

Snopes.com looked into the matter and stated: "We were able to confirm the FBI is not investigating Rich's murder — it is an MPD investigation." Snopes contacted a spokesman for the Washington, D.C., mayor's office, who said, "All claims made by Mr. Wheeler are false and take fake news to a whole new level. The family deserves better and everyday MPD continues to work diligently to solve this case." Snopes rated the claim "DNC staffer Seth Rich sent 'thousands of leaked e-mails' to WikiLeaks before he was murdered" as "False".

Rich grew up in a Jewish family in Omaha, Nebraska. He volunteered for the Nebraska Democratic Party, interned for Senator Ben Nelson, was active in Jewish outreach, and worked with the United States Census Bureau. In 2011, he graduated from Creighton University with a degree in political science. He moved to Washington, D.C., to work for pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. In 2014, he began working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as the voter expansion data director. One of his tasks at the DNC was the development of a computer application to help voters locate polling stations.