The murder of Seth Rich occurred on July 10, 2016, at 4:20 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Rich died about an hour and a half after being shot twice in the back. The perpetrators were never apprehended; police suspected he had been the victim of an attempted robbery.
Rich, aged 27, was an employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and his murder spawned several conspiracy theories, including the false claim, contradicted by the law enforcement branches that investigated the murder, that Rich had been involved with the leaked DNC emails in 2016. It was also contradicted by the July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents for hacking the e-mail accounts and networks of Democratic Party officials and by the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion the leaked DNC emails were part of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Fact-checking websites like PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck.org stated that the theories were false and unfounded. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post wrote that the promotion of these conspiracy theories was an example of fake news.
Rich's family denounced the conspiracy theorists and said that those individuals were exploiting their son's death for political gain, and their spokesperson called the conspiracy theorists "disgusting sociopaths". They requested a retraction and apology from Fox News after the network promoted the conspiracy theory, and sent a cease and desist letter to the investigator Fox News used. The investigator stated that he had no evidence to back up the claims which Fox News attributed to him. Fox News issued a retraction, but did not apologize or publicly explain what went wrong. In response, the Rich family sued Fox News in March 2018 for having engaged in "extreme and outrageous conduct" by fabricating the story defaming their son and thereby intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them. Fox News reached a seven-figure settlement with the Rich family in October 2020.
Seth Rich Early life and career Rich grew up in a Jewish family in Omaha, Nebraska. He volunteered for the Nebraska Democratic Party, interned for Senator Ben Nelson, was active in Jewish outreach, and worked with the United States Census Bureau. Eulogy given by Rabbi Steven Abraham of Beth El Synagogue at the service on July 13, 2016. In 2011, he graduated from Creighton University with a degree in political science. He moved to Washington, D.C., to work for pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. In 2014, he began working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as the voter expansion data director. One of his tasks at the DNC was the development of a computer application to help voters locate polling stations.
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 in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
Earlier that night, he had been at Lou's City Bar, a sports pub 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. Police were alerted to gunfire at 4:20 a.m. by an automated gunfire locator. Less than one minute after the gunfire, police officers found Rich conscious with gunshot wounds. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died over hours after being shot. Rich was not shot in the head, which is seen as evidence against the shooting having been an "assassination". According to police, he died from two shots to the back and may have been killed in an attempted robbery. Residents noted the neighborhood had been plagued by robberies.
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." The police told the family they had found a surveillance recording showing a glimpse of the legs of two people who could be the killers.
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. Two days after the shooting, Hillary Clinton spoke of his death during a speech advocating limiting the availability of guns.
In September 2016, Rich's parents and girlfriend appeared on the syndicated television show Crime Watch Daily to speak about the murder case. In October 2016, a plaque and bike rack outside the DNC headquarters were dedicated to Rich's memory. In February 2017, the Beth El Synagogue in Omaha named after Rich an existing scholarship that helps Jewish children attend summer camps.
The Rich family accepted the pro bono public relations services of Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman in September 2016. The Rich family and Burkman held a joint press conference on the murder in November 2016. In January 2017, Burkman launched an advertising campaign in Northwest D.C. searching for information regarding Seth's death. This included billboard advertisements and canvassing with flyers. In late February, Burkman told media outlets he had a lead that the Russian government was involved in Rich's death, and the Rich family then distanced itself from Burkman. On March 19, 2017, Rich's brother, Aaron, started a GoFundMe campaign to try to raise $200,000 for private investigation, public outreach activities, and a reward fund.
The Rich family was approached by Ed Butowsky (a friend of Trump advisor Steve Bannon and a frequent Fox News contributor), who recommended having Fox News contributor and former homicide detective Rod Wheeler investigate Seth's murder. Butowsky said Wheeler had been recommended to him. The family gave Wheeler permission to investigate, though they did not hire him. When questioned by CNN, Butowsky denied involvement in the case, but later admitted he was involved and had offered to pay Wheeler's fees. After Wheeler asserted links between Rich and Wikileaks in a Fox affiliate interview on May 15, 2017—an assertion he later backpedaled from—the family spokesman said that the family regretted working with Wheeler. Wheeler then sued Fox News on August 1, 2017, for mental anguish and emotional distress, alleging that he had been misquoted in a story that was then published on the urging of Trump.
Rewards The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) posted its customary reward of $25,000 for information about the death.
On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks announced a $20,000 reward for information about Rich's murder leading to a conviction. Rich's family said they were unable to verify this reward offer. WikiLeaks stated that this offer should not be taken as implying Rich had been involved in leaking information to it.
In November 2016, Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman said he was personally offering a $100,000 reward in addition to those announced by the police department and WikiLeaks, and he added another $5,000 to his offer in December and another $25,000 in January. Burkman said he hoped the money would help "get to the truth of what happened here and will either debunk the conspiracy theories or validate them."
Conspiracy theories
Origins
Beginnings on social media Political conspiracy theories and racially charged comments started to appear on social media the day after Rich's death. Within days, right-wing conspiracy theories began circulating, including false claims that his murder was connected to the DNC email leak of 2016 or the FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
A post on Twitter before Rich's memorial service spread the idea that his killing was a political assassination. Subsequently, the conspiracy theory was spread on the subreddit /r/The_Donald, and on July 29, 2016, the website Heat Street reported on these Reddit posts. Reddit users attempted to tie the homicide to the Clinton body count conspiracy theory. The conspiracy theory was later popularized by Donald Trump political adviser Roger Stone via his Twitter account.
According to British journalist Duncan Campbell, the Russian intelligence agency, GRU, tried to implicate Rich as the source of the stolen DNC emails in order to draw attention away from themselves as the real perpetrators of the theft. Datestamps on the DNC files were altered to show the data had been obtained on July 5, 2016, five days before Rich's death, and the time zone was changed to Eastern Time, within which Washington, D.C., falls. Guccifer 2.0, the alleged GRU front that provided the emails to Wikileaks, then reported that Rich had been their source. Based partly on their acceptance of the false dates, some experts then concluded that the emails had been copied in the DNC offices, and had not been hacked from outside.
WikiLeaks statements Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, fueled the speculation in an interview with Nieuwsuur published on August 9, 2016, which touched on the topic of risks faced by WikiLeaks' sources. Unbidden, Assange brought up the case of Seth Rich. When asked directly whether Rich was a source, Assange said "we don't comment on who our sources are". Subsequent statements by WikiLeaks emphasized that the organization was not naming Rich as a source.
According to the Mueller Report, WikiLeaks had received an email containing an encrypted file named "wk dnc link I .txt.gpg" from the Guccifer 2.0 GRU persona on July 14, which was four days after Seth Rich died.Mueller Report , vol. I, p. 46: On July 14, 2016, GRU officers used a Guccifer 2.0 email account to send WikiLeaks an email bearing the subject "big archive" and the message "a new attempt."163 The email contained an encrypted attachment with the name "wk dnc link I .txt.gpg." In April 2018, Twitter direct messages revealed that even as Assange was suggesting publicly that WikiLeaks had obtained emails from Seth Rich, Assange was trying to obtain more emails from Guccifer 2.0, who was at the time already suspected of being linked to Russian intelligence. BuzzFeed described the messages as "the starkest proof yet that Assange knew a likely Russian government hacker had the Democrat leaks he wanted. And they reveal the deliberate bad faith with which Assange fed the groundless claims that Rich was his source, even as he knew the documents' origin." Mike Gottlieb, a lawyer for Rich's brother, noted that WikiLeaks received the file of stolen documents from the Russian hackers on July 14, four days after Rich was shot. Gottlieb described the chronology as "damning".
Propagation by right-wing media and venues The conspiracy theories were promoted by Mike Cernovich, Sean Hannity, Geraldo Rivera, Kim Dotcom, Paul Joseph Watson, Newt Gingrich, Jack Posobiec, Tim Pool, and others.