Seth Rich

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i'm confusing with Vince Foster (719) but perhaps laid the ground?

neglected?

REBOOT 7 26

alt facts to collusion

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MMA

Right-wing ghouls revive the Seth Rich conspiracy theory 10 years after his murder

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 07/09/26

It's 2026 and MAGA lickspittle Benny Johnson is hosting a discussion of whether Hillary Clinton had former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich killed in 2016.

“This is why it's called a conspiracy theory,” former American Conservative contributing editor Chris Brunet told Johnson during a lengthy interview about Rich’s tragic murder on Johnson’s show Wednesday. “It's because it's a conspiracy of top DNC officials, including Hillary Clinton, to essentially murder Seth Rich in cold blood, is the conspiracy theory. And I believe that's what happened. I don’t believe he was the victim of a random mugging.”

Brunet added that President Donald Trump “should open a new investigation into the murder of Seth Rich to try to find his killers.”

“I would love for there to be a full investigation into this,” Johnson replied, later telling his audience to subscribe to Brunet’s Substack and “send tips if you know anything about this.”

Video

Citation

From the July 8, 2026, edition of The Benny Show as aired on YouTube

These ghouls are reviving the Seth Rich conspiracy theory nearly a decade after it first became a cause célèbre for the online right, which baselessly linked Rich’s tragic murder on July 10, 2016, in what police determined was an unsolved botched robbery while he was walking home late at night in Washington, D.C., to WikiLeaks’ release 12 days later of thousands of internal DNC emails whose contents damaged Clinton’s presidential campaign.

News accounts citing intelligence sources quickly suggested that Russian hackers had stolen the emails and provided them to WikiLeaks; the U.S. intelligence community publicly stated in October 2016that Russia had hacked the DNC; and the final report from then-special counsel Robert Mueller, who secured indictments against 12 Russian intelligence officers for the DNC hack, concluded that the emails were stolen and released through WikiLeaks as part of a Kremlin plot to undermine Clinton’s campaign. But right-wing conspiracy theorists, seeking to undermine arguments that Trump was too close to the Kremlin, claimed based on just about nothing that Rich had been the true source of the emails, and that he had been murdered — perhaps on Clinton’s order — in retaliation for their release.

The conspiracy theory was relegated to far-right fever swamps at first. But the story burst into the mainstream 10 months after Rich’s death, after Fox News published a thinly sourced online article and aired a series of on-air segments that bought into the far-right narrative.

Veteran Fox host Sean Hannity became the conspiracy theory’s biggest champion, arguing that it debunked “the whole Russia collusion narrative.” Meanwhile, Rich’s anguished family begged him and the rest of the conspiracy theorists to stop. “With every conspiratorial flare-up, we are forced to relive Seth’s murder and a small piece of us dies as more of Seth’s memory is torn away from us,” his parents wrote in The Washington Post. Ultimately, Fox retracted its article, claiming that it had not met the network’s standards, and Hannity stopped talking about the story.

This was perhaps the saddest and most grotesque saga I’ve seen come out of the right-wing media in my 19 years at Media Matters. And as the 10th anniversary of Rich’s murder approaches, the conspiracy theorists are back.

The hook for Brunet’s appearance on Johnson’s show is an allegation from attorney Ty Clevenger, posted online Monday and boosted the next day by the conspiracy theory site Gateway Pundit, claiming that “an attorney for the government told me that I would soon be getting confirmation that several hundred pages of documents related to Seth Rich were found in a previously-hidden room at FBI headquarters” where they were supposedly “among the files designated for destruction.”

Jim Hoft, an endless font of credulity and stupidity, explained in his post why this is supposed to matter:

This is the same FBI that originally told Clevenger back in 2017 it had zero records on Seth Rich because the bureau “was not involved” in the investigation of his death. They claimed it was nothing more than a “botched robbery” handled solely by local D.C. police.

Over the years, through relentless FOIA litigation and court pressure, the FBI has been forced to admit it actually possesses thousands of pages of Seth Rich documents, including his work laptop, an image of his personal laptop, and a DVD. Yet they continue to fight tooth and nail to keep the full truth hidden.

One possible explanation for this alleged disparity is that while the FBI did say in May 2017 that it was not involved in the investigation of Rich’s death, Mueller’s April 2019 final report suggests that some investigation did subsequently take place: It specifically confirms that Rich was not the source that provided the DNC emails to WikiLeaks. The records, in other words, could have been created while the FBI was knocking down the online right’s conspiracy theory.

The fever-swamp explanation, however, is that the FBI was in on the conspiracy in which Clinton had Rich killed for leaking the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, covered it up, kept all the evidence through the four years of the first Trump administration and the four years of the Biden administration and only decided to destroy them when Trump came back into power, but waited too long and his minions found it.

Dabbling in this particular insanity is not without risk. While Fox did not hold its employees accountable for their repulsive behavior, the network paid what was reportedly “a lucrative seven figure payment to the Rich family” to get them to settle a lawsuit. But the story offers Johnson’s ilk a priceless opportunity to talk about FBI documents that aren’t the Epstein files that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is illegally withholding.

### How the murder of a DNC staffer turned into a right-wing conspiracy

05/24/17 4:15 PM EDT

### Fox News' Seth Rich conspiracy theory, two years later: A timeline

05/17/19 8:33 AM EDT

### Fox News paid up to complete its reprehensible Seth Rich cover-up

11/30/20

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Major US newspapers and broadcast TV news outlets often failed to report on Jim Jordan’s role in undermining the 2020 election – and ignored the risk to certification in 2024 if he becomes speaker | Media Matters for America

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1 24 judd ymail

david D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group (Sinclair), purchased the Baltimore Sun — the largest newspaper in Maryland — for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition means another powerful media outlet will be under the control of a wealthy conservative businessman with a history of using local media outlets to push an ideological agenda.

Smith is the son of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith and, along with his brothers, controls the company. Sinclair, a publicly traded company, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets. A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair "coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics" and undergo "a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage."

Sinclair regularly requires its local affiliates to run segments pushing right-wing talking points. In 2018, Sinclair affiliates were required to have local anchors read a script warning views about "fake stories" being published by other media outlets "to push their own personal bias and agenda." The trend was described as "extremely dangerous to a democracy." The argument, which included no actual examples, matched then-president Donald Trump's rhetoric about the media.

When Sinclair faced criticism for puppeteering its local anchors, Trump defended the company. "So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased," Trump said. "Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke."

Sinclair stations were also required to run political commentary from Boris Epshteyn, who previously served as a Trump advisor and surrogate. Sinclair hired Epshteyn as its chief political analyst. Epshteyn's segments for Sinclair were mostly indistinguishable from his work for the Trump campaign. "The American people demand change, and they demand action, and that’s exactly what they’ll get from this administration going forward," Epshteyn declared in one piece.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and advisor, said that in 2016, the Trump campaign provided Sinclair stations with extensive access to Trump in exchange for friendly coverage that did not include fact-checking. "We are here to deliver your message," Smith told Trump in a 2016 meeting. Sinclair executives denied there was anything unusual or unethical about its dealings with the Trump campaign. Sinclair affiliates have also promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, including claims that DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by a hitman as payback for sharing sensitive emails to Wikileaks.

The history of using Sinclair-owned stations to push a right-wing agenda predates Trump. In 2004, "Sinclair ordered its stations to broadcast an hour-long documentary — preempting prime-time programming — titled Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal that blamed Democratic nominee John Kerry for the torture of American prisoners of war in Vietnam."

In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Smith defended Sinclair's news coverage "as balanced and apolitical." According to Smith, Sinclair is "not perfect" but overall is "much better than a lot of folk."

Smith, not Sinclair, is purchasing the Baltimore Sun — although that may be a distinction without a difference. Smith said, "he envisions opportunities for partnerships between The Sun and Sinclair, such as promoting each other’s stories, and other synergies in the future."

The checkered history of Smith's right-hand man

Smith did not purchase the Baltimore Sun alone. He brought along one partner: Armstrong Williams, a right-wing pundit and operative.

:{:{Williams has his own syndicated show on Sinclair stations. His social media accounts are full of incendiary statements about Democrats and liberals. "Each day Joe Biden has sat in office, we have gotten closer and closer to a fascist communist nation," Armstrong wrote on January 10. On January 5, he accused Biden of "destroy[ing] American democracy."}:

On December 19, Armstrong decried "the real time consequences of being infiltrated by radical left-wingers and the acceptance of their insane political agendas." (The issue was the Pope slightly softening his stance on same-sex marriages.) On December 6, Armstrong called Biden "a senile senior citizen" who "barely knows right from left." Armstrong also called the prosecutors pursuing cases against Trump as "terrorists" and promoted false narratives and conspiracy theories about the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.}:

Armstrong served as an advisor to former presidential candidate and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. He claims to have paid for Justice Clarence Thomas' wedding reception. In 2005, Armstrong lost his syndicated column after it was revealed that he had been paid $240,000 by the George W. Bush administration to promote their signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind.

Follow the money

Smith has used his vast wealth to support a variety of far-right causes. The Baltimore Banner reports that since 2015, Smith, through his family foundation, has donated large sums to Young Americans for Liberty ($581,000), Project Veritas ($536,000), Turning Point USA ($150,000), and Moms for Liberty ($121,000).

Smith does not support Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), and has sought to recruit opponents to unseat him. Sinclair stations have provided highly favorable coverage to former Mayor Shelia Dixon (D), who is running against Scott this year. Armstrong conducted an interview with Dixon on a Sinclair affiliate last summer that consisted mostly of "praise for Dixon and criticism of current elected officials."

In 2022, Smith backed a successful ballot initiative to impose term limits on Baltimore's elected officials. Currently, Smith is "underwriting Renew Baltimore, a ballot drive to cap and lower the property tax rate."

Now, Smith has a new tool in his arsenal to shape Baltimore's politics: the city's paper of record.

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an 6 22

after Democratic aide Seth Rich was shot and killed in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, July 10, 2016, it didn’t take right-wing media outlets long to promote bogus conspiracy theories about his death. Police believe that Rich was the victim of a street robbery, but Fox News persisted in pushing conspiracy theories about his death — inspiring Rich’s parents, Joel and Mary Rich, to file a lawsuit against the right-wing cable news outlet. And a new interview with National Public Radio (NPR) is the first public interview they have granted since reaching a settlement with Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp. in 2020.

Joel Rich told NPR, "We're just beside ourselves. With all the international stories and all the national media, how do you live with that, when you know it's all false about your son and his legacy?"

Under the terms of the settlement they reached with Fox News/Fox Corp. in 2020, Joel and Mary Rich could not speak directly about Fox News or any of its hosts during the NPR interview. But they talked about their son and the pain that conspiracy theorists brought them after his death. [twt tpx]

"After Seth's death,” NPR reporter David Folkenflik explains, “figures friendly to former President Donald Trump portrayed him as a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter. They peddled false claims that he had secretly stolen thousands of e-mails and given them to WikiLeaks to try to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the presidency. They suggested Clinton and the Democrats had arranged his killing, and that the Riches themselves were in on some kind of cover-up. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fueled the suspicions, aided by such extremist blogs as Gateway Pundit. None of this was true.”

Folkenflik adds, “As intelligence agencies in the Obama and Trump Administrations, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee and Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded, hackers were deployed by the Russian government to disrupt U.S. elections. But the falsehoods helped deflect growing evidence that the Russians had interfered in Trump's election win.”

Folkenflik notes thatSean Hannity, Eric Bolling and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs were among the hosts at Fox News or Fox Business who “baselessly suggested that Seth Rich had been the leaker and that he was murdered because of those leaks.”

Seth Rich’s death wasn’t the first time Fox News’ willingness to promote nonsense conspiracy theories created legal problems for them. Fox News is presently facing a $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for promoting the false claim that its voting equipmentwas used to help now-President Joe Biden steal the 2020 presidential election. A civil trial in that case is set for April 2023.

Fox News has also been sued for defamation by Smartmatic, a Dominion competitor. Smartmatic’s voting equipment was never used to help Democrats steal any votes in 2020, but that didn’t prevent Fox News hosts from promoting that false claim just as it promoted false claims involving Dominion. And Smartmatic asked for $2.7 billion in its lawsuit.

Although Joel Rich couldn’t get into the specifics of the settlement with Fox News/Fox Corp., he told NPR, “We are still glad we did this, because you get a settlement. It may not have the words 'I'm sorry.' But (in effect), you have the admission they did something wrong.”

Fox News, not surprisingly, declined to be interviewed for NPR’s article on Joel and Mary Rich. During the interview, they reiterated that the ludicrous conspiracy theories involving their son had no basis in fact.

Mary Rich told NPR, “We thought that when the lawsuit was over, our lives would be able to go back (to a sense of normalcy)…. People would know and understand that there was a big lie. And I have realized since then, our lives will never ever be able to return.”

Right wing conspiracy theorists are using the death of an Alabama news reporter to perpetuate the same baseless claims about former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton being "master assassins."

According to the Daily Beast, Christopher Sign, 45, was found dead inside his own home following what is believed to be an apparent suicide. Since Sign was a local news reporter, his story most likely would have been predominately reported by local news stations. However, right-wing conspiracy theorists have put a new spin on it which has accelerated the circulation of the story.

The publication reports that a number of right-wing media personalities and a Congressional member are now suggesting Sign may have been killed. The late news reporter's death is being compared to the death of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer who was killed in Washington, D.C. back in 2016.

At the time, law enforcement officials believed Rich's death was a "botched robbery." However, Fox News' Sean Hannity added fuel to the fire following Rich's death when he suggested: "he was somehow involved in the release of Democratic emails obtained by WikiLeaks—a claim that was quickly discredited and resulted in a confidential Fox News settlement with Rich's family."

While there were similar discussions about Rich following his death, Sign's death has been immediately pushed to the forefront as multiple people suggest he has somehow been added to the Clinton body count."

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was one of the first to speak publicly about asking death.

"Could this story have a perfectly normal, albeit tragic, explanation?" Bongino asked in a June 14 broadcast of his show. "It could. Anyone claiming otherwise should produce evidence. But I am suggesting it's getting quite odd, isn't it? People in the Clintons' circle—it's strange."

"Why is it that so many who cross the Clinton Crime Syndicate end up dead?" Boebert tweeted on June 13. Conservative radio host Dan Bongino also weighed in with similar conspiratorial thoughts.

What's more disturbing is how popular these types of incorrect stories have been. Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of the fact-checking website "Truth or Fiction" also offered a quick overview of those types of stories.

"I think the Clintons in general are ideal for the conspiracy theorists of the world because of their power and influence," Binkowski told The Daily Beast. "They get folded into the Illuminati conspiracy theory and give the haters political direction. Hillary Clinton, in particular, is a perfect person for the world's misogynists to focus on."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Seth Rich's early life and career

Rich grew up in a Jewish family in Omaha, Nebraska.^[23][24][25] He volunteered for the Nebraska Democratic Party, interned for Senator Ben Nelson, was active in Jewish outreach,^[26] and worked with the United States Census Bureau.^[27][28] In 2011, he graduated from Creighton University with a degree in political science.^[28][29] He moved to Washington, D.C. to work for pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.^[28] 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.^[30][31][32]

Shooting and death

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^[33] in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C.^[34][35][36]

Earlier that night he had been at Lou's City Bar, a sports pub 1.8 miles (2.9 km) from his apartment, in Columbia Heights, where he was a regular customer. He left when the bar was closing, at about 1:30 or 1:45 a.m.^[37] Police were alerted to gunfire at 4:20 a.m. by an automated gunfire locator.^[36][38] Within approximately one minute after the gun shots, police officers found Rich conscious with multiple gunshot wounds.^[39] He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he later died.^[40][41][42] According to police, he died from two shots to the back^[34][35] and may have been killed in an attempted robbery. Residents noted the neighborhood had been plagued by robberies.^[34] Rich's mother told NBC's Washington affiliate WRC-TV, "There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything ... They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life."^[43] The police told the family they had located a surveillance recording showing a glimpse of the legs of two people who could possibly be the killers.^[44]

Aftermath

On the day after the shooting, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz issued a statement mourning his loss and praising Rich's work to support voter rights.^[38][45] Two days after the shooting, Hillary Clinton spoke of his death during a speech advocating limiting the availability of guns.^[24][30]

Bike rack and plaque outside the DNC headquarters

In September 2016, Rich's parents and girlfriend appeared on the syndicated television show Crime Watch Daily to speak about the murder case.^[46][47] In October 2016, a plaque and bike rack outside the DNC headquarters were dedicated to Rich's memory.^[45] In February 2017, the Beth El Synagogue in Omaha named after Rich an existing scholarship that helps Jewish children attend summer camps.^[48]

The Rich family accepted the pro bono public relations services ofRepublican lobbyist Jack Burkman in September 2016.^[11] The Rich family and Burkman held a joint press conference on the murder in November 2016.^[11][49] 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.^[50][51] In late February, Burkman told media outlets he had a lead that the Russian government was involved in Rich's death,^[52] and the Rich family then distanced itself from Burkman.^[53] 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.^[54]

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.^[15][55] When questioned by CNN, Butowsky denied involvement in the case, but later admitted he was involved and had offered to pay Wheeler's fees.^[56][57] After Wheeler asserted links between Rich and Wikileaks in a Fox affiliate interview on May 15, 2017—an assertion he later backpedaled from^[58]—the family spokesman said that the family regretted working with Wheeler.^[3] 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.^[59]

Rewards

The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) posted its customary reward of $25,000 for information about the death.^[30][39]

On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks announced a $20,000 reward for information about Rich's murder leading to a conviction,^[60][61][62] although Rich's family said they were unable to verify this reward offer.^[63] WikiLeaks stated that this offer should not be taken as implying Rich had been involved in leaking information to them.^[30]

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.^[44][63][64] 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."^[65]

Conspiracy theories

Origins

Right-wing conspiracy theories began circulating in the days following Rich's death,^[66][67][68] including false claims that his murder was connected to the DNC email leak of 2016,^[3] or the FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation.^[68][69] A post on Twitter before Rich's memorial service originated the idea that his killing was a political assassination.^[66] 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.^[69][70] Reddit users attempted to tie the homicide to prior "Clinton Body Count" conspiracy theories.^[67] The conspiracy theory was later popularized by Donald Trump political adviser Roger Stone via his Twitter account.^[66]

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.^[71] 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 timezone 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.^[72]

Former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile dedicated her book Hacks: The Inside Story to Seth Rich. In the book, she speculates about possible motives for Rich's murder stating: "With all I knew now about the Russians’ hacking, I could not help but wonder if they had played some part in his unsolved murder. Besides that, racial tensions were high that summer and I worried that he was murdered for being white on the wrong side of town."^[73]

WikiLeaks statements

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.^[74] 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".^[75] Subsequent statements by WikiLeaks emphasized that the organization was not naming Rich as a source, as they do with other leaks.^[30] It subsequently came to light that WikiLeaks communicated with the Trump campaign over other issues, casting doubt on Assange's motives.^[76]

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 14th, which was four days after Seth Rich died.^[77][78][79] 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.^[80] 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."^[80]

Spread by social media and right wing

These conspiracy theories were promoted by Mike Cernovich, Sean Hannity, Geraldo Rivera, Kim Dotcom, Paul Joseph Watson, Newt Gingrich, Jack Posobiec, and others.^[81][82][83]

The same venues that fomented the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory helped to promulgate the Seth Rich murder conspiracy theories,^[11][84][85] and each shared similar features.^[86][87][88] Both were promoted by individuals subscribing to far-right politics,^[89] and by campaign officials and individuals appointed to senior-level national security roles by Donald Trump.^[90][91][92] 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.^[84] Both the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and the Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory were spread in the subreddit forum /r/The Donald.^[93] 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.^[94] Slate's Elliot Hannon called the claims about Seth Rich a "PizzaGate-like conspiracy theory surrounding Rich's death",^[95] The Huffington Post described it as "the 'alt-right' idiocy of Pizzagate all over again",^[88] NPR's David Folkenflik said Fox News coverage of it "evokes the pizza-gate terrible allegations utterly unfounded",^[96] and Margaret Sullivan wrote for The Washington Post: "The Seth Rich lie has become the new Comet Ping Pong ... Crazy, baseless and dangerous."^[97]

Debunking

The conspiracy theories have been debunked by law enforcement,^[4][5] as well as by fact-checking websites like PolitiFact.com,^[5][8] Snopes.com,^[9] and FactCheck.org.^[4][not ^in ^citation ^given]

The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia described the murder as related to a bungled attempted robbery,^[4] and said "the assertions put forward by Mr. Wheeler are unfounded."^[4] The FBI told PolitiFact.com that the MPD was investigating the homicide.^[8]

...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

epigram:

"It just won’t stop. The amount of pain and anguish this has caused us is unbearable. With every conspiratorial flare-up, we are forced to relive Seth’s murder and a small piece of us dies as more of Seth’s memory is torn away from us.
—Seth Rich's parents on these conspiracy theories.^[1]

Seth Conrad Rich (January 3, 1989 – July 10, 2016) was an American campaign worker for the Democratic National Committee whose unsolved murder in 2016 has led to various rather "colorful" conspiracy theories. The most common one claims that Rich was one of WikiLeaks' sources in a large leak of Hillary Clinton-related emails, and that as a result he was murdered on the orders of the Clinton family.^[2]

Seth Rich's parents have begged these wingnuts to stop spreading lies about their son's death.^[1]

The facts

On Sunday, 10 July 2016, Rich was shot about a block from his apartment in the Bloomingdale neighborhood in Washington, DC.^[3]

Earlier that night, he was in Columbia Heights, at a sports pub, 1.8 miles (2.9 km) from his apartment. He left the bar between 1:30 and 1:45 am.^[4] Police were alerted to gunfire at 4:20 am by an automated gunfire locator.^[5] Police officers found Rich with multiple gunshot wounds.^[6] He was in a conscious and breathing state.^[6] He was transported to a nearby hospital where he later died.^[7] Police have said he died from two shots in the back in what may have been an attempted robbery, noting that the neighborhood had been recently plagued by robberies. Strangely, however, they found his wallet, credit cards, and cellphone on his body.^[3]

According to Rich's mother:

There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything... They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life.^[8]

The murder remains unsolved.^[9]

The theories

Relating to his death

ClaimThe explanation that he was killed in a robbery gone wrong is false because nothing was stolen.^[10]ResponseThis theory seems to suggest that when a robbery goes wrong and a person is shot, then the robber will always steal something first instead of immediately fleeing the scene. Considering the speed in which police or witnesses could have arrived on the scene, it makes sense that the shooter would immediately flee.^[11] Stealing from Rich after shooting him would have also provided forensic evidence that would be used to implicate the shooter.^[12]ClaimHillary Clinton hired a hitman to assassinate Rich.^{[13][14][15][16]}ResponseThis absurd claim is exclusively believable to those who buy into the "Clinton body count" conspiracy.^[17] Since they falsely believe Clinton has done this before, then this theory seems plausible even though there is not a shred of evidence supporting it. When examining this theory in detail, it completely falls apart.If Clinton, or somebody else, had hired a professional hitman then they would make sure Rich died immediately, and not later on in hospital.^[18] It is highly unlikely a hitman would leave the scene of the crime with their victim still alive^[18] and in a conscious and breathing state.^[6]Clinton also had no motive to kill Rich. In order for this theory to make sense, Clinton would need to have known that Rich was the leaker.^[note ^1] After she discovered this, she would need to have decided that the best course of action would be to risk her entire campaign, reputation and freedom in hiring a hitman to kill Rich and then covering it up afterwards. It makes no sense that she would come to that conclusion rather than exercising any of the countless legal methods (e.g. naming and shaming) to discipline Rich.ClaimIn an email, John Podesta says he is "definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it."^[19] This gives credibility to the theory that Rich was assassinated.^[20][21][22]ResponseThis is a classic example of quote mining. The email in question is from February 2015, more than a year before both Rich's death and the DNC leaks.^[19] It was referring to an article in The Washington Postconcerning the branding of Hillary Clinton.^[23][24] Podesta was not a fan of the article and suspected that an insider had leaked information to reporters.^[24] In this context, his email had nothing to do with the DNC and was not in any way suggesting that leakers should be murdered.^[24] Even actual killers probably do not discuss murdering people on their work email.ClaimImran Awan^[note ^2] was partying with Seth Rich on the night of his murder.^[25][26] There is a link between Awan and Rich's death,^[27] and Awan might have murdered him.^[28][29][30]ResponseThe supposed evidence that they were partying together on the night of Rich's murder is a group photo which includes Rich and a man who conspiracy theorists claim is Imran Awan.^[31][32][33] Firstly, the photo was not from the night of Rich's murder. It was uploaded on 22 April 2015, more than a year before Rich's death.^[34] On top of that, the man in the photograph is clearly not Imran Awan. When comparing the supposed picture of Awan with a real picture of him, it is undeniable that they are two different people.^[note ^3] The man has since been identified as Miguel Huerta.^[35] This theory seemed to have gained traction due to a combination of the cross-race effect and many people being unaware of Awan's real appearance.The claim that Awan is a suspect in Rich's murder is based entirely on this false picture of him. Therefore, this theory has no basis in fact.ClaimDonna Brazile knows Seth Rich was murdered by the Clintons.^[36]ResponseIn her book, Brazile speculated that there could be other motivations behind Rich's killing, but never suggested the Clintons or DNC were involved.^[36] Brazile wrote that she feared for her life, placed surveillance cameras in her home and closed the blinds in her office so she could not be seen by a sniper.^{[36][37][note} ^4] Brazile was concerned that Rich's death may have been linked to Russia ("with all I knew now about the Russians’ hacking, I could not help but wonder if they had played some part in his unsolved murder"), racial tension ("racial tensions were high that summer and I worried that he was murdered for being white on the wrong side of town") or "someone who had it out for the Democrats".^[36][38] She has described the idea that Rich was murdered by the DNC for leaking to WikiLeaks as a "baseless conspiracy theory".^[36][39]

Relating to WikiLeaks

ClaimRich, not Russia, was responsible for the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak.^[40][41]ResponseThere is no evidence for this and it is highly unlikely since Rich had never shown any prowess at hacking and was not good with computers.^[10][42] Additionally, his parents have said that his low-level job did not grant him access to the kinds of emails that people are claiming.^[10][43]ClaimBoth Julian Assange^[44][45] and WikiLeaks^[46][47] have indicated that Seth Rich was their source.^[48] Why would WikiLeaks offer a reward for information on Rich's murderer if he was not their source?^[49][50]ResponseIt is true that Assange and WikiLeaks both hinted that Rich was their leaker.^[note ^5] However, this only proves that they want people to believe their source was Rich, whether or not it is actually true. This could be because he is the leaker or it could be in order to distract attention away from their actual source.^[51]If Rich had actually been the source, then the behaviour of Assange and WikiLeaks would make little sense.^[52] How is Assange protecting the anonymity of his source by strongly hinting at his identity? What benefit is there in indirectly indicating, in such a transparent way, that Rich was the leaker?However, assuming that Russia is the source, then their behaviour does make sense.^[53] They would either create or perpetuate alternative theories in order to divert attention from their real source.^[53] So logically they would use the Rich theory as a distraction from their actual source. This discredits the Russia investigation and downplays their links to Russia.It has also been claimed that Assange is trustworthy since he has never been proven to be a liar,^[54] but that is demonstrably false.^[55][56]ClaimThere is evidence on Rich's laptop of communication with WikiLeaks.^[57]ResponseThe source of this claim was Rod Wheeler (and an anonymous federal investigator), during a Fox News report in May 2017.^[58] According to Fox, an anonymous federal investigator claimed the FBI were in possession of emails between Rich and WikiLeaks.^[58] However, a law enforcement official has reported that DC police examined Rich's laptop and found it "never contained any e-mails related to WikiLeaks and the FBI never had it."^[58] FBI sources have said the bureau is not investigating the murder and Washington police never gave them Rich's laptop.^[59][60]In August 2017, Fox News was sued by Wheeler.^[58] According to Wheeler, he believed he was giving viewers a preview of the Fox News story, and a Fox reporter had told him they had learned about the source connecting Rich with WikiLeaks.^[10] Wheeler's lawsuit suggests the story was an attempt to discredit theories that Russia was responsible for the DNC leaks.^[58][61] Wheeler has since admitted that he had never seen Rich's computer and never talked with the federal investigator.^[62] Shortly after its initial broadcast, Fox News retracted the story for not meeting the "high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for our reporting."^[58]ClaimKim Dotcom said he knew Seth Rich and knew he was the WikiLeaks source since Dotcom was also involved.^[63]ResponseSo far, he has never presented any evidence verifying these claims, so they are simply baseless rumours.^[24] Dotcom's credibility is also questionable since he first commented on Seth Rich publicly in May 2017,^[64]10 months after Rich was killed. If he really had information, why would he hold onto it for so long? He has also been accused of money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud by the US Department of Justice.^[65]Dotcom currently resides in New Zealand and is fighting attempts to be extradited to the US.^[66]Further proving himself an unreliable source, Dotcom posted an obviously fake FBI document relating to Seth Rich that he later admitted was not authentic.^[67][68]ClaimRich has a motive for leaking. He was a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter^[69] who was disgusted by the corruption of the DNC.^[70]ResponseThe evidence suggests quite the opposite. Before his death, Rich was planning to move to Brooklyn in order to work for the Clinton campaign.^[42][61] Besides, Rich had no access to the relevant emails so he would not have the opportunity to be outraged at any corruption that would supposedly motivate him. There would need to be evidence he was aware of any corruption, and such evidence has never materialised.The idea he was a Sanders supporter is based on a Reddit account called "pandas4bernie"^[note ^6] that became inactive around the time he died.^[42] However, the people behind "pandas4bernie" have denied Rich was connected to their Reddit.^[42]ClaimBrad Bauman, who is officially Seth Rich's family spokesman, is actually a DNC handler assigned to the Rich family.^[71] Bauman is clearly trying to prevent the truth from getting out.^[72][73]ResponseAccording to journalist David Weigel, the DNC had no role in hiring Bauman.^[74] Seth Rich's family had asked some of his best friends who could help them with the media and they suggested Bauman.^[24] Bauman has neither worked for the DNC or been paid by them.^[24]The source that the DNC assigned Bauman to the Rich family appears to be Ed Butowsky in an article on WND.^[75] Butowsky claimed Rich's father said Bauman was assigned to them.^[76][77] Not only is this just gossip, but Butowsky has demonstrated himself to be untrustworthy due to his involvement in a retracted Fox News story about Seth Rich.^[78]Bauman is certainly not trying to prevent the truth from getting out (quite the opposite). Bauman is simply, and unsurprisingly, fed up with the conspiracy theorists and has been quite scathing in his opinion of them:

Anyone who continues to push this fake news story after it was so thoroughly debunked is proving to the world they have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath.^[79]

ClaimIn an audio recording, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims there is an FBI report establishing that Seth Rich made contact with WikiLeaks.^[80][note ^7]ResponseThe voice recording had been secretly recorded by Ed Butowsky during a phone call with Hersh.^[81] According to Joe Lauria of Consortium News, Hersh confirmed it was his voice on the tape and has said he was recorded without permission.^[82] The first thing to note, and what the conspiracy theorists often conveniently ignore, is thatHersh agreed that Rich was killed in a botched robbery.^[83] It is indeed true that Hersh also said that Rich made contact with WikiLeaks.^[83] The source for Hersh's comments was an unnamed FBI insider who Hersh described as a "very high level guy" who is "unbelievably accurate and careful."^[83]Explaining his comments, Hersh said "I hear gossip" and suggested Butowsky "took two and two and made 45 out of it."^[84][85]The released audio is only a portion of a longer phone call and left out several important clarifications. Hersh has said that he told Butowsky that the FBI report might be incorrect or nonexistent.^[81]According to a complaint from Rod Wheeler, "Hersh cautioned Butowsky that the information was not necessarily true, and that, even if true, did not preclude the possibility that the Russians also hacked the DNC."^[85][86] Wheeler's complaint also suggests Butowsky had planned to extort Hersh.^[86][85][87] Hersh himself told reporter David Folkenflik that Butowsky tried to blackmail him.^[88]Hersh's statements have also been somewhat contradictory. For instance, Hersh told NPR that he did not talk to anyone at the FBI about this,^[81] but also admitted he did hear about the FBI report but had not personally seen it.^[53] Additionally, despite his recorded comments, Hersh has said he never claimed to have a source in the FBI on the Rich case.^[85] This shows that he lied either during or after the secretly recorded phone call.Finally, although Hersh has won a Pulitzer Prize, that does not make him infallible (e.g. Judith Miller^[89]). In fact, Hersh had been recently lambasted for promoting discredited conspiracy theories concerning the April 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack in Syria.^{[90][91][92][93][94][95]} Hersh's source for his article about Syria had either purposely misled him or had been provided false information that they shared with Hersh.^[90] This could very well be the case again with his theoretical FBI source regarding Seth Rich.Hersh has also appeared on InfoWars where he was interviewed by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.^[96] Hersh said to Jones that "there's guys like you, and all sorts of other people around the world, that pay more attention than often the major papers here."^[96] Further discrediting himself, Hersh has claimed that "there's no such thing as a chlorine bomb" and "chlorine is just a gas, it's not a chemical warfare weapon."^[97][98][99]ClaimIf Rich is the leaker, the United States can no longer blame Russia, and any Russian investigation is unnecessary.^[24][100]ResponseEven if Rich was responsible for one batch of leaks, Russia has been implicated in three separate hackings. There are Russian fingerprints on the DNC email leak, DCCC cyber attacks and Podesta emails.^[10][24]

The conspiracy theorists

“”The people pushing this conspiracy theory seem to be, exclusively, people acting either; on behalf of the Russian government, far-right wingers, people on the alt-right, Trump supporters, or people who just hate Hillary Clinton.
—David Pakman^[101]

Fox News and "alternative" media

In a rare acknowledgment that it was wrong, Fox News issued a retraction on May 23^rd 2017 regarding its conspiracy mongering.^[102][103] Sean Hannity, one of the main agitators of this conspiracy theory at Fox, did not back down, stating "All you in the liberal media — I am not Fox.com or FoxNews.com. I retracted nothing."^[103]

Breitbart.com, InfoWars, WND and Globalresearch have published several articles supporting the conspiracy theories.^{[75][104][105][106][107]}

WikiLeaks

Julian Assange said on Dutch television:

Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material, and often very significant risks, as a 27-year-old, works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.^[108]

WikiLeaks has offered a cash reward of $20,000 for "information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich."^[109]

Russian government

Russian propaganda outlets RT^[110][111] and Sputnik^[112][113] fed into the conspiracy theories.^[114][104] RT aired a debate about Seth Rich's murder with three invited guests; Hank Sheinkopf, H.A. Goodman and Alex Christoforou.^[115][note ^8] Only Sheinkopf did not agree with the conspiracy theories.

In May 2017, the Russian embassy in London tweeted that Rich was the informant for WikiLeaks.^{[104][116][117]}

According to Salon:

Spreading word of the theory has also proven attractive to Russian state-owned media outlets. According to Google as of this writing, Rich’s death has been mentioned on 148 pages from Sputnik News, a propaganda site modeled after BuzzFeed. RT, Sputnik’s television-oriented counterpart, has run 53 stories mentioning Rich.^[118]

Clint Watts explained Russia's motivation:

*There are several facets to this — [Russian agents] want to push back on the idea, particularly among Trump supporters, that they hacked into the DNC. The way to do that is to put forward this Seth Rich scenario that the information didn’t come form[sic] Russian hackers, it came from an [inside] leak.

It rallies Trump’s base, which they have already influenced significantly over the last two years in the U.S. and foments conspiracy theories. And it mirrors what Trump says. Trump denies the findings of the intelligence agencies that Russia did hack into the DNC. [Russian agents] want that to go away as much as possible.^[104]*

References (many)

The newest "political correspondent" for the pro-Trump network One America News Networkis Chanel Rion, a right-wing editorial cartoonist who has drawn illustrations that have promoted anti-Muslim bigotry, Seth Rich conspiracy theories, and a call for "armed citizens" to defend the country against the "violent left."

One America News Network is an openly pro-Trump network that pushes conspiracy theories, including about the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. The Washington Post reported in a 2017 profile that the network's owner, Robert Herring Sr., has directed his channel to push the president's agenda. Jack Posobiec, a Pizzagate and Seth Rich conspiracy theorist who has previously advocated for the "alt-right," also works for the network.

President Trump recently tweeted his support for the network, writing: "Also, congratulations to @OANN on the great job you are doing and the big ratings jump ('thank you President Trump?')"

During a 2017 interview with conspiracy theory outlet TruNews, Rion said that she started cartooning "when all these sleazy women started coming out attacking Trump saying that they touched him [sic] or did what this or that under flimsy grounds and I thought that the media really dropped the ball on that."

Rion's illustration have pushed anti-Muslim messages and conspiracy theories. She drew a cartoon wondering if the "deep state," DNC, or "Clinton crime family" killed Seth Rich and if the Clintons killed author Victor Thorn, a Clinton critic and virulent anti-Semite. She also made an illustration that said we need "armed citizens to defend America from [the] violent left" because the left is supposedly plotting an "assassination coup to kill [the] right," and the Democrats are plotting "to inspire killers."

mma 519

Two years ago, Fox News published a story that promoted the conspiracy theory that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich, and not the Russians, had provided DNC emails to Wikileaks. Fox would retract the story a week later, before promising an investigation.That investigation never actually happened -- so we did it for them.

There were five parts to the investigation -- and a comprehensive timeline as well:

Part 1: Horrible sourcing led to the discredited report. The report that led to the entire event was sourced to a "federal investigator" from an unnamed government agency. The only corroboration was then-Fox contributor Rod Wheeler saying his investigation was "consistent" with that allegation. Based on this flimsy (at best) evidence, Fox published a story that Rich was a source for WikiLeaks, and that Democrats were engaged in a widespread effort to cover it up.
Part 2: Fox's "news" side correspondent pushed the conspiracy theory on air. Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins reported on this story for Fox & Friends, putting the credibility of Fox's news side behind it. Jenkins hyped "bombshell new evidence" and even vouched for Wheeler at one point.
Part 3: Laura Ingraham's ghastly attack on Seth Rich's family. At one point during Fox & Friends's coverage of this conspiracy theory, Laura Ingraham suggested that Rich's parents were squelching efforts to find out the truth about their son’s death for partisan or monetary gain.
Part 4: Jay Sekulow helped Hannity promote the conspiracy theory -- and then became Trump's lawyer. Just a few weeks before he became Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to express support for the conspiracy theory about Seth Rich. Sekulow's motives were clear, saying “I think this whole Russian argument, Sean, is such subterfuge from reality.”
Part 5: Everyone involved was rewarded. How did Fox News responded to this retracted report? As far as we know, no one was punished. In fact, several people involved were actually promoted. The person who edited the story was promoted to managing editor of FoxNews.com. Hannity's executive producer at the time was promoted to vice president and editor-in-chief of Fox News digital. Laura Ingraham was given her own show (where predictably enough she faced backlash for going after the family and friends of victims of gun violence). Newt Gingrich still appears regularly on the network. And, of course, Hannity has faced no negative consequences whatsoever. As one senior Fox employee told CNN at the time: "No one ever gets fired from Fox for publishing a story that isn't true."
A complete timeline. We've put all the relevant information in one place, in an easy to download and easy to read PDF.

So, why do this? There are some powerful people even today who think that Fox News is like any other news organization, save for a few bigoted opinion hosts. Those people are wrong. Fox News takes conspiracy theories from the fever swamps, and injects them into mainstream GOP politics. It rewards people who participate in this farce, no matter what they got wrong. Fox News is rotten to the core, and sadly, too many people still don't realize it.

---

mma

Fox News spent weeks in May 2017 spreading the conspiracy theories trying to link murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich to WikiLeaks.FromSean Hannity to Newt Gingrich to Steve Doocy, the objective was clear: If there were any possibility that Rich was the source of the emails, then it would not have been Russia. And if it were not Russia, Trump would be cleared of any malfeasance. But now, thanks to Robert Mueller's final report, we finally have proof that it was all a lie.

In 2017, following Rich's murder, right-wing conspiracy theories arose, asserting that the staffer had provided DNC emails to Wikileaks for publication. There was never a shred of evidence to support this conspiracy theory. No responsible news organization ran with anything close to this. But Fox News did.

This was a transparent attempt to protect Trump from the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to aid his campaign. After running with the story for days amidst criticism, Fox finally pulled the initial report. Hannity then continued pushing it, stopping only when Rich's family asked him to. Fox News eventually promised an internal investigation into the matter -- and this week marked 700 days since that promise. And still, we've heard nothing.

There is no reason to believe that anyone at Fox will be held accountable for their actions. Fox has never cared about the basic ethical standards accepted at most newsrooms. As Media Matters' Matt Gertz explained, "Fox is a propaganda outlet geared toward ensuring the continued dominance of Trump and his movement. The pain of Rich’s family is simply the cost of doing business."

ASSANGE WIKILEAKS

By midsummer 2016, the Russian contacts sounded alarms inside the F.B.I., where agents had received a tip about Mr. Papadopoulos and puzzled over Mr. Page’s Moscow visit. The bureau sent a trusted informant to help understand what was happening: Stefan Halper, a former Nixon and Reagan adviser and professor at Cambridge University, reached out to Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos under false pretenses.

American officials have defended Professor Halper’s work, saying the use of such a confidential informant is routine in a counterintelligence investigation. Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress and the media have called him something different: a “spy” sent by the Obama administration to infiltrate the campaign.

Eventually, Mr. Trump would use such episodes as a foundation for his view that America’s law enforcement agencies had been aligned against him from the beginning — ammunition for a looming war with the “deep state.” This idea would consume Mr. Trump after he became president, feeding his sense of grievance that the legitimacy of his victory was under attack and shaping his decisions as he tried to blunt the widening Russia investigation.

The long-promised “dirt” the Russians had on Mrs. Clinton would soon be made public. Three days after the Trump Tower meeting, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, appeared on a British Sunday television show.

He said that his website would soon be publishing a raft of emails related to Mrs. Clinton. And he said something at once ominous and prescient: “WikiLeaks has a very big year ahead.”

Guccifer’s Game

Using a hacker persona, Russian military intelligence officers began to reveal documents stolen from the Democrats.

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A website made its splashy debut three days later, presenting a jaunty hacker who called himself Guccifer 2.0. He had broken into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, Guccifer said, offering as proof a selection of purloined documents.

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“Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into the DNC’s network,” Guccifer wrote on June 15. “The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks,” he added — which seemed to explain Mr. Assange’s boast.

Russian intelligence had worked fast. Just the day before, D.N.C. officials and their cybersecurity contractor, CrowdStrike, had announced that Russian hackers had penetrated the committee’s computer network.

Overnight, Russian military intelligence officers set up the website and created the Guccifer persona to counter the D.N.C. accusations. Guccifer — a name borrowed from a real Romanian hacker — was presented as a jovial Romanian, a “lone hacker,” who in his posts wanted to make one thing very clear: He had nothing whatsoever to do with Russia.

“It seems the guys from CrowdStrike and the DNC,” he wrote, “would say I’m a Russian bear even if I were a catholic nun.”

In fact, beyond the conclusions of CrowdStrike and the F.B.I., there were clues from the start that Guccifer’s posts came from Moscow: The name of the founder of the Soviet secret police was embedded in Guccifer’s documents, written using a Russian version of Microsoft Word.

Yet the Guccifer gambit would prove remarkably effective at creating doubt about Russia’s responsibility for the hack. Republican operatives working on congressional campaigns emailed “Guccifer” and received hacked documents relevant to their races. For journalists, the claims of the supposed “lone hacker” made the role of Russian intelligence seem to be a disputed allegation rather than a proven fact.

Today there is no doubt who hacked the D.N.C. and the Clinton campaign. A detailed indictment of 12 officers of Russia’s military intelligence agency, filed in July by Mr. Mueller, documents their every move, including their break-in techniques, their tricks to hide inside the Democrats’ networks and even their Google searches.

See the timeline of hacking that led to the indictment.

The agency, now called the Main Directorate but often referred to by its former abbreviation, the G.R.U., proved agile, brazen and not terribly discreet — the same pattern it would show two years later in the nerve-agent poisoning in England of its former officer, the defector Sergei V. Skripal.

The hacking might have drawn little attention had the G.R.U. stopped there, simply stealing emails to peruse for intelligence clues. But the Russians’ decision to leak the emails to undercut Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy was a huge escalation.

The Russian officers’ political skills proved equal to their hacking expertise. They deftly manipulated a long list of Americans and Europeans, many of whom embraced Guccifer’s tall tale and took seriously the claim that the other Russian false front, DCLeaks.com, was run by American “hacktivists.”

“Guccifer 2.0” addressed a cybersecurity conference in London via messages to one of the organizers. The purported Romanian jousted with a suspicious reporter for Motherboard, insisting: “I don’t like Russians and their foreign policy. I hate being attributed to Russia.” When Twitter suspended the DCLeaks account, the Fox Business host Lou Dobbs accused the company of “Leftist Fascism.” The account was swiftly reinstated.

But the Russians’ masterstroke was to enlist, via the Guccifer persona, the help of WikiLeaks. Neither of the Russians’ websites, Guccifer 2.0 or DCLeaks.com, had much reach. But WikiLeaks had a large global audience. Its editor, Mr. Assange, shared Mr. Putin’s hatred of Mrs. Clinton and had a soft spot for Russia.

Mr. Assange assisted with the subterfuge. He repeatedly denied that he’d received the documents from Russia; whether he was really taken in by the “Guccifer” ruse is uncertain.

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Fox News via YouTubePublished OnSept. 17, 2018]

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But he also obscured the Russian role by fueling a right-wing conspiracy theory he knew to be false. He offered a $20,000 reward for information about the murder in Washington of Seth Rich, a young D.N.C. staffer shot to death in an apparent bungled street robbery. Trump supporters were suggesting Mr. Rich had leaked the D.N.C. emails and been killed in retaliation, and Mr. Assange played along.

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In a discussion about WikiLeaks’ sources on Dutch television in August 2016, Mr. Assange suddenly brought up Mr. Rich’s killing.

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“That was just a robbery, I believe, wasn’t it?” the interviewer said. “What are you suggesting?”

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“I’m suggesting that our sources take risks,” Mr. Assange said — and then declined to say if Mr. Rich was a source.

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Such misleading interviews helped camouflage the Russian origin of the leak, and WikiLeaks’ adept timing gave the emails big impact. After some technical problems, according to Mr. Mueller’s indictment, “Guccifer” passed the entire archive of D.N.C. emails to WikiLeaks. The website published 19,252 of them on July 22, 2016 — three days before the Democratic National Convention.

The Russians’ work detonated with powerful political effect. The emails’ exposure of D.N.C. staffers’ support for Mrs. Clinton and scorn for Senator Bernie Sanders, her chief rival, forced the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to resign. The resentment of the Sanders delegates deepened, leaving the party even more bitterly divided as it turned to the general election.

Unknown to the feuding Democratic delegates, a cyberdrama had been playing out in secret for weeks, as CrowdStrike experts tried to root out the Russian hackers who had penetrated the D.N.C. and its sister organization, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Robert S. Johnston, a lead investigator for CrowdStrike, said the Russian hackers, uniformed officers of military intelligence, were “like a thunderstorm moving through the system — very, very noisy.”

CrowdStrike had begun watching the Russians in April, asking D.N.C. staffers to keep quiet about the intrusion. “We only talked over Signal,” an encrypted text and call service, said Mr. Johnston, a former Marine and veteran of the United States Cyber Command who is now chief executive of the cybersecurity firm Adlumin. Only by following the hackers for several weeks could CrowdStrike be certain it had found the Russians’ tools and blocked their access.

But somehow, possibly by intercepting communications inside the D.N.C. or the F.B.I., which was investigating the breach, the G.R.U. officers learned they had been spotted. On May 31, two weeks before the public disclosure of the hack, Ivan Yermakov, a G.R.U. hacker who had used American-sounding online personas — “Kate S. Milton,” “James McMorgans” and “Karen W. Millen” — suddenly began searching online for information about CrowdStrike. He sought to find out what the cybersleuths knew about the Russians’ main tool, a nasty piece of malware called X-Agent, the indictment noted.

After that, the spy-versus-spy contest escalated. “We knew it was the Russians, and they knew we knew,” Mr. Johnston said. “I would say it was the cyber equivalent of hand-to-hand combat.”

The candidate favored by the Russians alternated between denying their help and seeming to welcome it. On June 15, the day after the D.N.C. hack was disclosed, the Trump campaign pitched in with a novel idea to deflect blame from the Russians: The D.N.C. had somehow hacked itself.

“We believe it was the D.N.C. that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate,” the statement said. Later, Mr. Trump tried out other alternative theories: Perhaps the hack had been carried out by “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” or a “some guy in his home in New Jersey,” or the Chinese, or almost anyone.

But at other times, he appeared to accept that Russia was responsible.

“The new joke in town,” Mr. Trump tweeted on July 25, “is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.”

And two days later, he famously invited the Russians to try to retrieve 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton had deleted from her computer server on the basis that they involved personal matters and not State Department business.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a Florida news conference. The Mueller investigation discovered that the Russians were evidently listening: The same day as the news conference, the G.R.U. hackers began sending so-called spearphishing emails to accounts associated with Mrs. Clinton’s personal office.

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The Associated PressPublished OnSept. 17, 2018]

Mr. Trump’s pronouncements stood in striking contrast to the responses of past presidential candidates who had been offered assistance by foreign powers. In 1960, both Adlai E. Stevenson and John F. Kennedy refused quiet offers of help from Khrushchev.

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https://boingboing.net/2018/08/02/judge-rejects-lawsuit-against.html

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Twelve Russian military officers were indicted for hacking into Democrats' computers and disseminating the stolen information to disrupt the 2016 election. The indictment also has references of Infowars host and a then-Breitbart columnist.

But perhaps the most immediately notable part of the indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe is that it directly rebuts the long-simmering right-wing media conspiracy theory about murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. While the indictment alleges that Russians were behind the hacking (something that intelligence had reportedly concluded long ago), right-wing media have for years -- without any evidence -- pressed the idea that it was actually Rich who did it.

Sean Hannity became the ringleader of this effort, relentlessly dedicating his show in May 2016 to the conspiracy theory until pressure from dropped advertisers forced him to stop covering it, even though he promised he was "closer to the TRUTH than ever." Neither Fox News nor Hannity have ever apologized or even explained their botched reports.

Now that the office of special counsel Robert Mueller has laid out the actual facts (that Russian hacking came very shortly after then-candidate Donald Trump publicly asked for their assistance), it's time for Hannity to come clean.

But we all know he won't. And neither will Fox News. Newt Gingrich has already refused to apologize. And that's why it's more important than ever for people like you to take action and force Hannity's hand.

That's the only thing that works.

Also: An Infowars host reacted to news of the indictments by screaming out "Thank you Russia." Fox host Lou Dobbs downplayed them, saying they were just based on hearsay. And Hannity said that the indictments were suspicious because of the timing; Hannity, while absurdly and bizarrely claiming that we still don't know who leaked the emails, said that it could be any other country.

===

https://www.alternet.org/can-lawsuits-slow-tide-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-seth-richs-family-wants-find-out

amanda m

In the era of Donald Trump, conspiracy theories aren't just getting more prominent and more numerous. They're also becoming more personal. One of the hallmarks of the modern era of social media-fueled, right-wing paranoia is the increasing tendency of conspiracy theorists to target not just politicians and celebrities for their lurid myth-making. Now such concoctions may affect the lives of ordinary people who, in the past, would likely have not had a high enough profile to attract this kind of obsessive rumor-mongering.

Now the targets are turning to the courts to fight back.The parents of the Sandy Hook massacre victims are suing Infowars founder Alex Jones for spreading conspiracy theories alleging that they faked their children's deaths. (Perhaps in an effort to shield himself, Jones has backed away from such theories and now says he believes the killings actually happened.)

Brennan Gilmore, a Virginia activist who happened to film the attack that killed Heather Heyer at the Charlottesville protests last summer, is also suing Jones and a blogger behind Gateway Pundit for conspiracy theories meant to discredit him. And the family members of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer murdered in July 2016, in what police say was a botched robbery, are suing Fox News and others for stoking conspiracy theories that Rich, rather than Russian agents, may have been behind the hack of Democratic emails given to WikiLeaks -- and was murdered in retaliation.

Now the circle of litigants has opened up further, as Brad Bauman, a public relations expert who has volunteered as the Rich family's spokesperson, is also suing a series of conservative figures for defamation, alleging that they have spread conspiracy theories accusing him of covering up for a nefarious Democratic Party plot.

Bauman's case is of particular interest to me, because it illustrates the way Trump-era conspiracy theories metastasize, growing ever more complicated and strange as conspiracy theorists attempt to integrate conflicting evidence into their overarching theory — and how, in the process, the number of people who become targets for harassment and abuse can grow.

“Having watched what Brad went through," Melissa Ryan, a progressive activist and friend of Bauman's, said to Salon, "it gave me a new understanding for the kind of hell that conspiracy theories can wreak on a person’s life that I wouldn’t have understood otherwise.”

Bauman was unable, for legal reasons, to speak to Salon. But his legal complaint lays out a (relatively) simple story: As the conspiracy theories around Rich's murder started to grow louder, friends and colleagues of Rich asked Bauman to help the family, which he says he did on a volunteer basis for no payment. Soon, the right-wing rumor mill began to focus on Bauman, and accusations began to fly that he was an agent working for the DNC to help cover up Rich's murder. Bauman's suit says he was then doxxed by internet trolls (meaning that his home address and other private information was revealed) and that articles on right wing websites and social media accusing him of engaging in a cover-up have caused him emotional distress and damaged his business.

I reached out to Ed Butowsky,a financial adviser who lives in Texas and is one of the defendants in Bauman's lawsuit. Butowsky has been active on right wing sites like Gateway Pundit and WorldNetDaily in pushing the idea that Bauman was somehow "assigned" by the DNC to the Rich family. (Bauman denies this and says, in his suit, that he has never worked for the DNC.)

“It’s a nuisance lawsuit. There’s absolutely nothing behind it," Butowsky insisted, having called me back at 7:38 a.m. after a day of phone tag. "I still don’t understand this, nor many of these other lawsuits against me.”The conversation was a maddening glimpse into the rhetorical spiderwebs that form around conspiracy theories.

Butowsky is being sued not just by Bauman, but by :{the :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Rich:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{ family for allegedly ingratiating himself:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}: with them under false pretenses, in order to promote his conspiracy theory about their son. Butowsky hired a private detective, claiming he was acting on the family's behalf, but allegedly used that detective instead to push insinuations, on Fox News and other outlets, that Rich was murdered as part of a Democratic conspiracy.

Our brief conversation — under 15 minutes — was whiplash-inducing. At one point, Butowsky told me, “Fly down to Dallas. I’ll give you your Ph.D. in the Seth Rich story."

But when I followed up by asking him why he's so interested in Rich's death, he got miffed: “I don’t have a huge interest in this story.”

I noted that all these lawsuits came after Butowsky -- as he admitted in a 45-minute interview published on Gateway Pundit -- reached out to the Rich family and hired a detective to look into the case. All of which, I suggested, constituted a reasonable definition of someone "interested" in this story. Then how could he claim, I asked, to give someone a Ph.D. on a topic he claimed to have little interest in? "Because I’ve been sued by everybody," Butowsky said.

At that point, Butowsky became agitated, and insisted that instead of asking him any further questions myself, I watch the 45-minute interview at Gateway Pundit. Then he got off the phone.

That interview at Gateway Pundit is a confusing mess of digressions, self-pity and elaborate, complex insinuations that are largely impenetrable to outsiders to the Seth Rich conspiracy-theory crowd. The crux of it, as someone who had to watch it for professional reasons, is that Butowsky would like viewers to believe he was a disinterested party who, for somewhat mysterious but totally innocent reasons, ended up spending huge amounts of time ingratiating himself to this family and thousands of dollars on a private detective to look into an internet conspiracy theory.

This itself provides a major insight into how these conspiracy theories work in the age of the internet. The dense complexity, the crushing amount of content that no human being has the time to thoroughly consume, the use of insinuations to push noxious ideas while retaining plausible deniability: All this serves to disorient people such that they give up even trying to understand the truth of the situation.

“They’re undermining the ability of the average American to discern what is true, what is false, what to believe and what not to believe," Bauman said on a press call in September, regarding what he's learned from being caught up in this.

"Even if you’re not actively sharing conspiracy theories, you’re sort of exposed to it," Ryan argued, saying this leads to "the dehumanization" of the figures involved, even for right-wing audiences who don't necessarily follow or believe all the ins and outs of whatever conspiracy theory is burning up conservative media at the moment.

For instance, Ryan continued, many right-wing figures at first "weren’t comfortable sharing conspiracies about the Parkland students, calling them crisis actors." But after a month of such content swirling around the internet, the students started to seem less human, and ordinary people who consumed right-wing media became "very comfortable sharing doctored images of the students that weren’t true.”

During September's press call, Bauman attested to the power of humanization, noting that after trolls had made his phone number public, he decided to just start taking the calls when conspiracy theorists rang him.He said that most of them, after a person-to-person conversation, had dialed down their outrage and paranoia, which made him feel it's possible to "bring people back to a place where they’re thinking much more clearly about things."

Unfortunately, however, getting every conspiracy theorist on the phone to hammer it out is a task more onerous than watching every conspiracy theorist's lengthy YouTube video. Which is why these theories are now being brought to court, not just to correct false or damaging assertions, but to exact real-life consequences on people who spread them. In their suit against Fox News and Butowsky, the Riches explicitly state that they "seek to help prevent similar malicious and reckless conduct to protect future innocent victims from similarly becoming political fodder."

Whether that will work remains to be seen. In the meantime, the ecosystem supporting all these conspiracy theories, which all too often target ordinary private citizens, continues to expand through social media, blogs and internet forums. Far more must be done to protect people who, often through no fault of their own, become enmeshed in major news stories that make them into leading targets of conspiracy theorists.

https://www.alternet.org/legal-scholar-explains-how-sandy-hook-parents-can-achieve-justice-against-conspiracy-theorist-alex

https://www.alternet.org/media/seth-richs-family-suing-fox-news-its-egregious-reporting-dnc-staffers-death

family of slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich is suing Fox News for compensatory and punitive damages in response to the network’s “false and fabricated facts”that fueled ongoing conspiracy theories about his 2016 murder. The network never apologized for or explained its gross mishandling of the story.

Almost immediately after Rich was killed in July 2016, a massive right-wing conspiracy theory was born. The baseless theory generally contended that Rich’s death was linked to the email hacking of the DNC that culminated during the last presidential campaign, and that he was the source of a set of 22,000 stolen DNC emails leaked by WikiLeaks. That theory and its offshoots spread across far-right circles on social media, in right-wing blogs, and on fake news and conspiracy theory websites.

It eventually reached Fox News, when, on May 15, 2017, then-contributor Rod Wheeler told a Washington, D.C., Fox News affiliate that he had confirmed Rich was in contact with WikiLeaks. The claim was repeated in a FoxNews.com article on May 16. From there, the theory exploded in mainstream conservative media, including on Fox Business and the Fox News channel, where prime-time host and serial misinformer Sean Hannity obsessed over the case and became the conspiracy theory’s most visible national champion.

Even after Fox News retracted its online story with a vague reference to editorial standards, and, in some cases, even after Rich’s family pleaded for outlets to stop politicizing their son’s death, Hannity and other Fox News personalities continued to push the theory.

The lawsuit by Rich’s family mentions just some of the times that Fox News continued to push the conspiracy theory after the original story was retracted:

Almost a year after the network promised an investigation into the matter, no explanation for the behavior has been given nor disciplinary actions taken, according to Newsweek. To this day, the Seth Rich conspiracy theories, which have been dismantled by many major news organizations, persist.

Just this morning, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec andleading Seth Rich conspiracy theorist Matt Couchboth claimed they had been in touch with one of the defendants in the case. Couch, who dismissed the suit as “nonsensical,” is exploiting the lawsuit to solicit donationsfor his media group, which is purportedly conducting an “investigation” into his death.

Now, nearly two years after Rich’s tragic death, his family is suing Fox News for damages because the network "aided and abetted the intentional infliction of emotional distress" and served as a national platform for a “sham story.” From a March 13 ABC News article:

In the suit, which was obtained by ABC News, Rich's parents, Joel and Mary Rich, claim that Fox News investigative reporter Malia Zimmerman and Fox News commenter Ed Butowsky reached out to the family under false pretenses to support stories that Seth Rich leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The lawsuit claims that Fox News, Zimmerman and Butowsky are liable for the harm caused by the report because they "aided and abetted the intentional infliction of emotional distress" caused by the story about Seth Rich and alleges that Fox News provided with a national platform to develop what the lawsuit dubs a "sham story."

The Rich family claims that the “defendants’ conduct was extreme and outrageous” in what they allege was a deliberate effort to portray Seth Rich as a “criminal and traitor to the United States.”

“No parent should ever have to live through what we have been forced to endure. The pain and anguish that comes from seeing your murdered son’s life and legacy treated as a mere political football is beyond comprehension” Joel and Mary Rich said in a joint statement

gorka maga coalition

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cnn

stunning new lawsuit filed against Fox News has placed the spotlight on a wealthy Republican donor.

Ed Butowskybills himself as an "internationally recognized expert in the wealth management industry" and a "leading voice on financial matters." He's also been a semi-regular guest on Fox News and its sister channel, Fox Business Network, as well as a number of other media outlets.

It's those ties to Fox, as well as to the Trump White House, that helped thrust Butowsky to the center of a bizarre and explosive story involving a slain Democratic National Committee staffer and the Trump administration.

A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses Butowsky of working with the White House on a false (and eventually retracted) Fox News story about the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

According to the suit, the story was intended to undermine the public's belief in the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia hacked the DNC and obtained the emails ultimately released by Wikileaks.

The lawsuit, which was brought by Rod Wheeler, a private investigator who was quoted in the retracted Fox story represents the first tangible link between the fringe conspiracy theory surrounding Rich's death and the White House.

Butowsky told CNN that the allegations are "bulls**t."

He further detailed his side of the story in an appearance on CNN Tonight on Tuesday, claiming the lawsuit was just an attempt by Wheeler to make money.

"I've never talked to President Trump in my life," Butowsky said, denying that the White House had "anything to do with any of this."

In a statement, Jay Wallace, Fox News' president of news, denied that the network published the story "to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue." Wallace also said that Fox has "no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted."

Though he is now more squarely in the public eye than ever before, Butowsky's role in the saga has been known for some time. After Fox's story lit up pro-Trump media in May, the Rich family revealed that Butowsky was subsidizing Wheeler's investigation into the murder, which Washington, D.C. police have blamed on a botched robbery.

But the Rich family was, according to a spokesman representing them, taken aback when they learned that Butowsky has ties to Steve Bannon, the White House strategist and former chairman of Breitbart News.

Butowsky has appeared on Breitbart News Radio multiple times over the years and has described Bannon as "a friend and a very nice man." But Butowsky later told BuzzFeedthat he and Bannon are more like acquaintances.

"It's not like I have a Steve Bannon teddy bear," Butowsky said in May. "I've never eaten a meal with the guy."

Butowsky's website details a long career in business, including the 2005 launch of a private wealth management advisory firm in the Dallas area. He's described as "a well-respected member" of the community, and "an accomplished speaker on a variety of topics."

Beyond his business, Butowsky has also plied his trade as a go-to analyst for reporters and broadcasters, frequently popping up on television or in news articles.

His media hits include appearances with outlets outside the conservative media space occupied by Fox and Breitbart, including CNN, CNBC and CBS.

He's also a close friend of "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan, even serving as a spokesperson of sorts after Logan was hospitalized in 2015.

But on Tuesday, as the lawsuit reverberated throughout the media world that he's traveled for years, Butowsky tried to make himself less visible. He appeared to remove videos of his cable news appearances from YouTube, and he deleted his Twitter account.

you've been following the news of the past day,you already know Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler filed a lawsuit alleging Fox News and the White House coordinated a fake news story about murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich, turning it into a massive plot to attack Hillary Clinton. ...Ed Butowsky is the guy who hired Wheeler to investigate Rich’s murder and is named in the lawsuit. He appeared on CNN last night to answer questions about the allegations, and Chris Cuomo became impatient with his evasions.

Butowsky denied coordinating with the White House on the Fox story, said that private investigator Wheeler was broke, looking for money and wanted a job in the Trump administrations.

He also refused to tell Cuomo where he got the original tip alleging that the murder was connected to Wikileaks.

No real straight answers, just bluster and smoke. Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?

UPDATE: Oops!

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https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/09/14/fox-business-hosts-far-right-troll-who-yelled-seth-rich-conspiracies-hillary-clinton-book-signing/217947

no link

Fox Business hosts far-right troll who yelled Seth Rich conspiracies at a Hillary Clinton book signing

Fox Business cut away from video before Seth Rich attacks the network was forced to retract

Blog ››› September 14, 2017 9:05 PM EDT ››› BRENDAN KARET

Fox Business host Liz MacDonald invited far-right, Seth Rich conspiracy theorist Laura Loomeron to the network to promote her ambush video attacking Hillary Clinton at a book signing event. MacDonald hosted Loomer, who has pushed the conspiracy theory that Clinton was involved in the murder of a Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer, even after the network’s sister company, Fox News, was forced to retract a Seth Rich conspiracy story.

MacDonald introduced her September 14 segment with Loomer by highlighting footage from Loomer criticizing Clinton during a book signing where she attacked the former presidential candidate over emails and relief money to Haiti. But the video abruptly stops before the footage shows Loomer asking Hillary Clinton “What happened to Seth Rich?,” referring to the debunked conspiracy theory that Fox was forced to retract. From the September 14 edition of Fox Business’ Risk & Reward with Deirdre Bolton:

LIZ MACDONALD (HOST): Conservative activist Laura Loomer confronted Hillary Clinton about the missing emails at her book signing.

[VIDEO BEGINS]

LAURA LOOMER: Hi, it's so great to see you.

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, it's great for you to be here.

LOOMER: Thanks for having me.

CLINTON: Thank you for coming.

LOOMER: Thanks for having me. So, the American people would really like to know what happened to your 33,000 emails? What happened in Benghazi?

CLINTON: Go read the book, you want to find --

LOOMER: What happened to the millions of dollars that was supposed to go to the people in Haiti?

CLINTON: You know what? I'm so sorry you believe things that are untrue.

[VIDEO ENDS]

MACDONALD: Laura Loomer, from Rebel Media. Laura took those -- the footage right there, is with me now. What was it like to confront Hillary Clinton?

LOOMER: You know, it's always a good time. I've done it a couple times in the past before, which is why I was surprised that she hasn't recognized me. But, you know, it's -- it's definitely an adrenaline rush because this is probably the most hated woman in America and, you know, to be asking her questions that so many --

MACDONALD: To some. Not to everybody. She got 55 million people who voted for her.

LOOMER: Yeah, to many, but to ask her questions that one, the mainstream media refused to ask her, and two, that so many Americans want answers about, it was great that I was able to do that."

Fox News heavily promoted the Seth Rich conspiracy theory and even after the network conceded that the story was completely false, personalities like Sean Hannity continued. Hannity promoted the story after Fox retractions and media criticism and even pushed the conspiracy theory after Seth Rich’s family demanded he stop his disgraceful campaign.

Loomer also has a long history of promoting Seth Rich conspiracy theories on Twitter, claiming Seth Rich was murdered for “testifying against Hillary.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/people/ed-butowsky

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/exploding-scandal-should-cost-sean-hannity-his-job

Political operatives have dishonestly seized on a murder to undercut the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election -- and Sean Hannity has been the point person for that cynical campaign, a lead steer for the nonsense.

Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer, was murdered July 10, 2016. Within days, initially at the behest of anonymous users on Reddit and 4chan, his murder would be used as the basis for a massive right-wing conspiracy theory, with the eventual purpose of undermining and discrediting the notion that Russia illicitly interfered in the 2016 presidential election in part by hacking DNC, DCCC, and John Podesta emails that WikiLeaks later published. And no one has done more to push this conspiracy theory than Fox News host Sean Hannity -- even after Fox News retracted a story about it that was published on its website.

Hannity had long dabbled in conspiracy theories about Seth Rich’s murder, but he went into overdrive when, on May 15, Fox 5 DC and FoxNews.com ran stories linking Rich to WikiLeaks based largely on the statements ofthen-Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler. This was just days after former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified to Congress aboutRussian interference.

In the week after that story was published (and quickly fell apart), Hannity repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory on his television show, his radio show, and his Twitter account. Rich was referenced numerous times on his Fox News television show, and the story was hinted at in countless others.

Hannity’s coverage was so relentless that he was condemned by some of his coworkers, who reportedly told The Daily Beast that the host was “‘embarrassing’ the network, and the promotion of the Rich conspiracy theory is senselessly cruel to a grieving family.” Rich’s brother personally asked Hannity to stop pushing the conspiracy theories.

During all this, Hannity repeatedly made clear that he was pushing the story because it undermined the Trump/Russian narrative. (In fact, Hannity went back to the story in June and made the same point.)

After more than a week of flogging this nonsense, Hannity said on his television show that he would stop talking about Rich “for now.” Minutes later, he promised on Twitter to keep going:

Ok TO BE CLEAR, I am closer to the TRUTH than ever. Not only am I not stopping, I am working harder. Updates when available. Stay tuned!

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 24, 2017

All this unfolded in the public sphere and proves Sean Hannity’s volatility. And look: Sean Hannity has long been a serial misinformer who has pushed lies and dishonest smears. He has been completely shameless in shilling for the far-right. Hannity has toyed around with basically every conspiracy theory that the far-right has proffered.

But now we have evidence that the deceit goes even deeper. And while Hannity is not named as a defendant, his story is inseparable from the story at hand.

We know that political operative Ed Butowskyplayed a key role in the retracted Fox story that set Hannity off on his conspiracy crusade in May. According to a lawsuit filed by Wheeler -- the Fox News contributor who served as a key source for the claims connecting Wikileaks to Rich in the May 15 Fox story -- that story was the product of a cynical attempt by Ed Butowsky, Fox News, and the White House “to deflect public attention from growing concern about the administration's ties to the Russian government.” And once that story was published, Hannity was its chief promoter.

We know that Butowsky coordinated for him and Wheeler to meet then-press secretary Sean Spicer in the White House. We know that Butowsky sent talking points to Fox News hosts and producers detailing how to talk about the conspiracy theory in a way that undermined the reporting from credible outlets about Russian interference in the election. We know that in the days after Butowsky sent that message, his words were repeated once on Fox & Friends and multiple times on Hannity.

In short, we know that Hannity is not just a dishonest, volatile pro-Trump hack, but that he is a dangerous propagandist willing to do or say anything to shore up Trump support with his audience on a daily basis. Nothing Hannity says, to his audience or advertisers, can ever be trusted. He is both post-factual and post-ethical. There is nowhere that Sean Hannity will not go for political convenience. When Hannity takes to the air, there is nothing that he will not aid or abet to help Trump.

John Whitehouse is the Digital Director at Media Matters]

.Journalism, regardless of its political consequences, deserves extensive protection from financial retaliation. Propaganda does not. And Sean Hannity is a rank propagandist. As Angelo Carusone wrote, if Fox News executives choose to not do the right thing and fire Sean Hannity, the obligation is on sponsors and the people at large to force their hand. Enough is enough.

heavy hmn

5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

By Jessica McBride

Published Aug 1, 2017 at 12:11pm

Updated Aug 2, 2017 at 2:04pm

Ed Butowsky is a Dallas wealth manager with ties to Breitbart and White House adviser Steve Bannon who is accused in a federal lawsuit of being behind a now retracted Fox News story in the murder of DNC analyst Seth Rich.

The lawsuit, filed by private investigator Rod Wheeler on August 1 in New York, alleges that President Donald Trump and former presidential Press Secretary Sean Spicer were involved with Butowsky, a Trump supporter, in pushing the now discredited Fox News story on Rich and WikiLeaks that was later retracted by the network. The suit filed by Wheeler further alleges that a Fox News reporter fabricated quotes as part of a plot to divert attention from Russian hacking claims of the DNC.

In a statement, Fox President of News, Jay Wallace, said, “The accusation that FoxNews.com published Malia Zimmerman’s story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous. The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman. Additionally, FOX News vehemently denies the race discrimination claims in the lawsuit – the dispute between Zimmerman and Rod Wheeler has nothing to do with race.” The reporter in question, Malia Zimmerman, has a colorful past in Hawaiian political journalism. You can read more about her here.

You can read the lawsuit in full below. Rich was a data analyst for the Democratic National Committee who was shot to death in 2016 on a Washington D.C. street in a murder that remains unsolved. The case has spawned conspiracy theories that have been hotly criticized by a spokesman for Rich’s family. Rich’s family, in a statement on August 1, said they hope the lawsuit brings an end to the conspiracy theories surrounding Rich’s death.

Oliver Darcy ? @oliverdarcy

Statement from the Seth Rich family

8:36 AM - Aug 1, 2017

48 48 Replies 341 341 Retweets 639 639 likes

Butowsky told CNN that the allegations are “bullsh**t.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in an August 1 press briefing, denied the allegations about Trump in the lawsuit. “He had no knowledge of this story and it’s completely untrue that there was White House involvement in this story,” Sanders said. “Beyond that, this is ongoing litigation and I’d refer you to the actual parties involved who aren’t the White House.”

For his part, Butowsky also spoke to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on August 1 and flatly insisted it’s “not true” that Trump had anything to do with the story. He accused Wheeler of being “dead broke” and wanting a job in the Trump administration. [2x base motive ploy] After the interview, Butowsky’s name trended on Twitter with people questioning his veracity.

RafaelAngel0812 @rafaelangel0812

CNN: RT CNNTonight: Ed Butowsky, named in lawsuit over retracted Fox News story: "Not true" Trump was aware of sto…

7:46 PM - Aug 1, 2017

All of this has people wondering more about Butowsky’s background.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Butowsky Is Accused of Sending Wheeler a Text Message Saying Trump Read the Fox Story Before It Aired

The suit claims that then Press Secretary Spicer met with Wheeler and the Trump supporter, Butowsky, who was pushing the story, before it ran. According to the lawsuit, on May 14, 2017, Wheeler allegedly received a text message from Butowsky that said Trump read the Fox story before it ran:

Not to add any more pressure but the president just read the article. He wants the article out immediately. It’s now all up to you. But don’t feel the pressure.

The lawsuit said the president referred to in the text message was Donald Trump.

You can read the Wheeler lawsuit in full here:

The reporter on the story, Malia Zimmerman, and Fox News published their story less than 36 hours later, alleging, the lawsuit says, “that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was the source of the now infamous DNC emails leaked by WikiLeaks during the 2016 Presidential primaries.”

The lawsuit alleges, “The motivation behind the article: establish that Seth Rich provided WikiLeaks with the DNC emails to shift the blame from Russia and help put to bed speculation that President Trump colluded with Russia in an attempt to influence the outcome of the Presidential election.”

The retracted Fox News story had initially reported a supposed bombshell: That Wheeler, a private investigator working for the Rich family, had evidence that Rich was leaking information to WikiLeaks. The network later retracted the story.

The lawsuit was filed on August 1 in a New York federal court against Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., Fox News Network LLC, Malia Zimmerman, and Ed Butowsky. Butowsky is a Trump supporter who hired Wheeler, it says. Zimmerman was the reporter on the Fox story.

Fox’s president of news told NPR in response to the lawsuit that there is no “concrete evidence” that Zimmerman misquoted Wheeler. Spicer told NPR “that he took the meeting as a favor to Butowsky, a reliable Republican voice. Spicer says he was unaware of any contact involving the president. Butowsky now tells NPR he was kidding about Trump’s involvement.”

The lawsuit also claims that Butkowsky left a voicemail for Wheeler the same day that said, “A couple minutes ago I got a note that we have the full, uh, attention of the White House, on this. And, tomorrow, let’s close this deal, whatever we’ve got to do. But you can feel free to say that the White House is onto this now.”

Wheeler alleges in the lawsuit that the reporter, Zimmerman, “fabricated two quotations and attributed them to Mr. Wheeler.”

Those quotations were:

“My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks.”

And: “My investigation shows someone within the DC government, Democratic National Committee or Clinton team is blocking the murder investigation from going forward. That is unfortunate, Seth Rich’s murder is unsolved as a result of that.”

Alleges the lawsuit, “According to Butowsky, the statements were falsely attributed to Mr. Wheeler because that is the way the President wanted the article. Zimmerman, Butowsky and Fox had created fake news to advance President Trump’s agenda.”

The suit alleges that Wheeler had to “correct the false record” and “lost all credibility in the eyes of the public.”

Asked for comment, Wheeler’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, told Heavy, “According to the complaint, at the same time that 21st Century Fox’s General Counsel, Gerson Zweifach, was meeting with the UK regulators in an attempt to convince them that Fox had in place procedures to ensure compliance with broadcasting standards to purchase Sky, Fox News was working with the Trump administration to disseminate fake news in order to distract the public from Russia’s alleged attempts to influence our Country’s presidential election.”

Butowsky said the voice mail he left for Wheeler that referred to the White House actually meant a Washington D.C. police officer who wanted whistleblower status. Incredulously, Cuomo asked, “How does a DC detective get coded as White House?” Butowsky responded, “He wanted whistleblower status, according to Rod Wheeler.”

Here’s the full interview:

“I’ve never talked to President Trump in my life,” he said a few minutes later. He said when his text message mentioned the president it was meant “tongue-in-cheek” to Wheeler. “It was just two guys, me basically finding a way to chat with him about stuff he’s been talking about,” Butowsky said. “This lawsuit is all about Rod Wheeler trying to get money because he messed up.”

Seth Rich Case Lawsuit Alleges Trump, Spicer Involved in Fox Story: Read

Butowsky Attended Trump’s Inauguration & Is a Wealth Manager From Dallas

Buzzfeed reported that Butowsky is “a prominent wealth manager from Dallas and a contributor to Breitbart News who attended President Trump’s inauguration,” and who put the Seth Rich family in contact with Wheeler.

“They said they didn’t feel they were getting any answers,” Butowsky told Buzzfeed. “The investigation wasn’t going anywhere. I said ‘why don’t you hire a private detective?’ They said they didn’t have any money.” He told Buzzfeed that he “offered to pay for a private investigator, and called Wheeler. There, he said, his involvement ended,” but he added that Wheeler had never billed him.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Butowsky used to work for Morgan Stanley and is a managing partner at a Texas investment firm.

“Formerly with Morgan Stanley and ran a team in the High Net Worth space where we were members of the firm’s highest ranking designation, Chairman’s Club,” his LinkedIn bio says. “I was frequently in the top 5 of teams out of 14,000 teams in ranking and 2 times ranked number one. I am currently a Managing Partner at Chapwood Investments, LLC . Additionally, I recently co-founded http://www.720Investor.com.” (The latter website is no longer active.)

He describes his current company as “a boutique firm that manages the personal wealth for private individuals , often setting up mini- family office structures for clients.”

He has shown up on national television shows, writing, “I am frequently honored to be interviewed by the national media, including Fox News Channel, Bloomberg TV, FOX Business Channel, The Blaze TV, ABC, NBC, Sports Illustrated, and many of SIRIUS radio channels, including The David Webb Show.”

He added, that he “was previously a Senior Vice President at Morgan Stanley and guest lectured at Yale University, NYU Stern School of Business, SMU, University of Florida ETC…”

CNN reported he is “also a close friend of ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Lara Logan, even serving as a spokesperson of sorts after Logan was hospitalized in 2015.”

Seth Rich

Right-wing ghouls revive the Seth Rich conspiracy theory 10 years after his murder

The checkered history of Smith's right-hand man

Follow the money

Seth Rich's early life and career

Shooting and death

Aftermath

Rewards

Conspiracy theories

Origins

WikiLeaks statements

Spread by social media and right wing

Debunking

The facts

The theories

Relating to his death

Relating to WikiLeaks

The conspiracy theorists

Fox News and "alternative" media

WikiLeaks

Russian government

List of exploitive people

External links

Notes

References (many)

stunning new lawsuit filed against Fox News has placed the spotlight on a wealthy Republican donor.