Thread: Slain DNC staffer had contact with WikiLeaks, investigator says

Slain DNC staffer had contact with WikiLeaks, investigator says

Published May 16, 2017
Fox News

There is tangible evidence on the laptop of Seth Rich that confirms he was talking to WikiLeaks prior to his murder, a private investigator suggested Monday.

There is tangible evidence on the laptop of a former DNC staffer that confirms he was talking to WikiLeaks prior to his murder, a private investigator suggested Monday.

Seth Rich was killed last July in what authorities have called a robbery gone awry.

But Rod Wheeler, a former D.C. homicide detective and Fox News contributor, is leading a parallel investigation into Rich’s murder.

Wheeler told Fox 5 DC that he believes there is a cover up and the police department may have been told to back down from the investigation.

"The police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming,” Wheeler told the station. “They haven't been cooperating at all. I believe that the answer to solving his death lies on that computer, which I believe is either at the police department or either at the FBI. I have been told both.”

Wheeler added that a source in the D.C. police department “looked him in the eye” and told him that investigators were told to stand down in the case.

“Now, that is highly unusual for a murder investigation, especially from a police department,” he said. “Again, I don’t think it comes from the chief’s office, but I do believe there is a correlation between the mayor's office and the DNC and that is the information that will come out.”

Links between Rich and WikiLeaks was raised when the Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing website, offered a $20,000 reward leading to the arrest of the killers.

Assange also implied in August that Rich was killed because he was the WikiLeaks source of emails from top DNC officials showing they WikiLeaks source of emails from top DNC officials showing they conspired to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders from becoming the party’s presidential nominee. That controversy resulted in Debbie Wasserman Schultz having to resign as DNC chairperson.

Joel Rich, Seth’s father, downplayed any possible link between his son and the website. He told Fox News in January he believes Seth was killed during a robbery and not because he leaked information.

Security footage showed two men following Rich home moments before he was shot twice in the back. The camera only captured the assailants’ legs. Police said nothing of value was stolen from Rich.

Rich would have had access to sensitive DNC information. His main duty at the DNC was to build an online system to get out the vote. The system, which combines government data, technologies and formats from all 50 states, allows anyone to check if they are registered to vote and, if not, where to register and how.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...ator-says.html

I think Seth Rich is the person who released the John Podesta emails to Wikileaks, not the Russians. He didn't do it to help Donald Trump, he did it to help Bernie Sanders. The whole "TRUMP TIES TO RUSSIA" is a hoax story fabricated by the FBI who was hacking political campaigns to spy on them. That's why the FBI knew the DNC had been hacked before the DNC knew it had been hacked, if it was hacked at all.

Just my opinion.

The Family Of A Murdered DNC Staffer Has Rejected A Report Linking His Death To WikiLeaks

A report on Monday evening claimed to find links between slain DNC staffer Seth Rich and WikiLeaks.

But Rich's family told BuzzFeed News, "[W]e see no facts, we have seen no evidence, we have been approached with no emails."

Originally posted on May 16, 2017, at 6:23 a.m.
Updated on May 16, 2017, at 6:49 p.m.
Alex Campbell
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Fox News

The family of murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich on Tuesday strongly rejected reports claiming he had been in contact with WikiLeaks.

"As we've seen through the past year of unsubstantiated claims, we see no facts, we have seen no evidence, we have been approached with no emails and only learned about this when contacted by the press," spokesperson Brad Bauman told BuzzFeed News in an emailed statement.

Fox 5 in Washington, DC, first reported last night that the "family's private investigator" had found "tangible evidence" on Rich's laptop showing he was in touch with WikiLeaks before he died last summer. Then this morning, Fox News reported that Rich "had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks," citing a "federal investigator."

Yet Rich's family said in its statement that the private investigator was "paid for by a third party" and under his contract had been "barred from speaking to press" without explicit authorization from the family. And the investigator told CNN that he was only repeating the Fox News story — he didn't personally have evidence showing communication with WikiLeaks.

"I only got that [information] from the reporter at Fox News," Wheeler told CNN.

Rich, 27, was shot and killed early one morning in Washington in July of last year. He had been working on a DNC project trying to make it easier for people to find where to vote on Election Day.

WikiLeaks published thousands of hacked DNC emails soon after Rich's death, and conspiracy theories began to swirl after the organization offered a $20,000 reward for help solving his case. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange then raised further eyebrows when he spoke of Rich's death, saying, "Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material."

WikiLeaks backed off the claim, saying his statement "should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source for WikiLeaks," nor that his death was connected to the leaked emails.

Police said in response that they believe there is no connection between his death and "his employment at the DNC." Since that time, Rich's family have also said publicly that they believe his death wasn't connected.

But the story picked up again this week with the two reports by Fox outlets. Both stories quoted Rod Wheeler, a former homicide detective at Washington's Metropolitan Police Department, saying he had learned that there were emails between Rich and WikiLeaks before his death.

Wheeler is a Fox News contributor. In April he tweeted an apparent picture of himself at the White House. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department said that Wheeler had been "dismissed from the agency" after working there from 1990 to 1995.

Both reports said that Rich's family had hired Wheeler as a private investigator — which Rich's family responded to in its statement by noting he had been paid by a third party, and had not been authorized to speak with the press.

The Fox 5 story from last night quoted Wheeler as saying that a local police officer in Washington had "looked me straight in the eye" and told him they had been ordered to "stand down" on Rich's case. Fox added an update this morning that local police had denied that claim.

This morning's Fox News story added a further source, an unnamed "federal investigator" who said, “I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks.” The investigator said that the FBI is in possession of the emails.

Rich family spokesman Brad Bauman, a Democratic political consultant by trade, told BuzzFeed News that the Wikileaks story just doesn't add up. Rich's job at the DNC had nothing to do with IT or internal cybersecurity, so the hack wouldn't have been in his domain. “He wouldn’t have had access to any of those emails," Bauman said.

Bauman said that evidence tying Rich to Wikileaks has been “nothing but hearsay or the insane rantings of conspiracy theorists.”

He accused people pushing the idea of a "political agenda that is wholly un-American" who had denied a grieving family "the chance to mourn."

"Frankly," Bauman said, "I believe there’s a special place in hell for the folks who are pushing the story.”

BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold contributed reporting.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexcampbel...WB2#.jwbPZgq5z

Alex Campbell is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. His secure PGP fingerprint is 0712 96AD 2FED CEF9 AFA7 9280 0397 E646 0A39 2C8A
Contact Alex Campbell at alex.campbell@buzzfeed.com.

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I hope they find Seth's killer. Perhaps that will shed some light on rumors or speculations.

Fox retracts Seth Rich murder conspiracy

• 7 hours ago

LINKEDIN

Fox News has retracted a report about a US Democratic party employee whose murder last year has fuelled a right-wing conspiracy theory.

The cable network's report made an unsubstantiated link between Seth Rich's death and Wikileaks' leak of hacked DNC emails.

The victim's own family have debunked the report, imploring Fox News to stop reporting it.

Mr Rich, 27, was shot dead in Washington DC, last year.
Police say evidence suggests the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) staff member was the victim of a botched robbery. No arrest has been made.

'Fake news story'

On Tuesday, Fox deleted its story, but said it would continue investigating his death.

Image copyrightCOURTESY OF THE RICH FAMILYImage captionThe 27-year-old was shot dead in in Washington, DC, last year

"On May 16, a story was posted on the Fox News website on the investigation into the 2016 murder of DNC Staffer Seth Rich," the network said in a statement.

"The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.

"Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed."

Mr Rich was shot in the back on 10 July last year in the north-west of the city at the Bloomingdale neighbourhood, where residents have reported a spate of gunpoint robberies.

Following his death, some right-wing media suggested his killing was revenge by figures linked to the Hillary Clinton campaign for allegedly leaking embarrassing DNC emails to Wikileaks.

Wikileaks itself fuelled the conspiracy theory by offering a reward for the capture of Mr Rich's killer and hinting that he may have been the source of the emails.

No evidence has emerged to indicate that Mr Rich provided the emails to the anti-secrecy organisation.

Fox News this month published and aired reports on Washington affiliate WTTG-TV, citing Rod Wheeler, a contributor to the cable network and private investigator, who said he was being paid by the Rich family to look into the murder.

He said evidence showed Mr Rich was in contact with Wikileaks before his death.

The Rich family rejected his claim and released a statement through a spokesman saying: "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."

WTTG-TV later retracted the report, acknowledging Mr Wheeler had no evidence to support the claim. However, the story initially remained on Fox's website.

Mr Wheeler told CNN the source for his assertion was a reporter at Fox News.

The Rich family sent Mr Wheeler a cease-and-desist letter and threatened legal action if he continued to discuss the case.

But Fox News host Sean Hannity continued to fan the conspiracy theory on his show, prompting the family to write a letter urging the programme to stop disseminating the claims.

Mr Hannity defended his decision to continue promoting the story on Twitter on Tuesday, suggesting an online entrepreneur, Kim Dotcom, can back up the claim.

Mr Dotcom, who is currently fighting extradition to the US from New Zealand on copyright infringement and money laundering charges, said he has evidence to support the conspiracy theory.
Brad Bauman, a spokesman for the Rich family, told CNN they were grateful for the retraction.

"The family would like to thank Fox News for their retraction on a story that has caused deep pain and anguish to the family and has done harm to Seth Rich's legacy," he said.

"We are hopeful that in the future Fox News will work with the family to ensure the highest degree of professionally and scrutiny is followed so that only accurate facts are reported serving this case."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40021373

The murder is unsolved. When the murder of Seth Rich is solved, then we'll know who hacked the DNC, and it won't be the "Russians", IMO.

May 25, 2017 By Kirsty Jane
Sean Hannity Accuses Media Watchdog Of ‘liberal fascism’ As Seven Advertisers Pull From Show

Seven companies announced Wednesday that they will no longer advertise on Sean Hannity’s nightly show on Fox News.


From Daily Mail

Cars.com, the automotive classified site, was the first to announce that it was pulling its commercials from the popular 10pm nightly talk show Hannity, which has devoted extensive airtime to a conspiracy theory surrounding a murdered Democratic Party official.

‘The fact that we advertise on a particular program doesn’t mean that we agree or disagree, or support or oppose, the content,’ Cars.com said Wednesday in a statement.

‘We don’t have the ability to influence content at the time we make our advertising purchase. In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity.’

Six other advertisers followed suit, according to BuzzFeed.
They include two mattress companies, Leesa and Casper; exercise bike maker Peloton; military family insurer USAA; Crowne Plaza Hotels; and Ring, which provides outdoor home security.

In a late night tweet, Hannity did not mention the advertiser exodus, though he did say that he was going on a ‘Memorial Day long weekend.’

‘Uh oh My ANNUAL Memorial Day long weekend starts NOW,’ Hannity tweeted.

‘Destroy Trump/Conservative media breathless coverage starts! Did Hannity do last show?’

A former colleague of Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, famously went on vacation last month after dozens of companies pulled ads from his show in response to reports that he paid $13million to settle sexual harassment claims made against him by a number of women.

O’Reilly did not return to his show, as Fox News fired him.

Hannity earlier Wednesday blamed Media Matters for America, a non-profit organization, for orchestrating the backlash against him in an attempt to have him fired.
( media matters is a soros funded organization -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Matters_for_America )

COMPANIES WHO PULLED THEIR ADVERTISING FROM HANNY
The Fox News anchor started furiously tweeting early Wednesday morning, after the progressive media watchdog group published a list of his advertisers for a boycott of his show.

Hannity has come under fire in recent weeks for actively promoting an unproven theory that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot to death in Washington, DC, last year, had ties to WikiLeaks.

The conservative host has been on the defensive, particularly since his bosses at Fox News retracted the story about Rich following public outcry.

Hannity said Tuesday he’s backing off his speculation about the murder after talking with Rich’s family, which had appealed to the media to stop.

The decision took Hannity off a potential collision course with his network, which earlier Tuesday had removed a week-old story about the case from its website because ‘it was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.’

http://eheadlines.com/sean-hannity-a...ull-from-show/

Why doesn't anyone want to solve the murder of Seth Rich? Why are people who bring it up attacked? Why do his parents not want media attention on the unsolved murder of their son? Most families want any media attention they can muster to bring awareness to the murder and hopefully trigger tips and information to come forward?

Is this just another example of our Period of Ironies and Opposites?