Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who was murdered last July in Washington D.C., is now at the center of a conspiracy theory.
The theory goes that Rich wasn’t the victim of a “robbery gone wrong,” but that he was targeted because he had been leaking thousands of DNC emails to WikiLeaks.
Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News reports that a Texas businessman named Ed Butowsky allegedly financed a parallel investigation of the murder, asking the Rich family to hire private investigator, Rod Wheeler.
This is where things get interesting.
Wheeler broke some big news on Monday during an interview with Fox5, claiming Seth Rich’s laptop contained correspondence between the deceased and WikiLeaks. Wheeler also believes that the police and the FBI are deliberately covering it up:
“The police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming,” said Wheeler. “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.”
When we asked Wheeler if his sources have told him there is information that links Rich to Wikileaks, he said, “Absolutely. Yeah. That’s confirmed.”
Another piece, this time from Fox News proper, claims that a “federal source” told the news outlet that “an FBI forensic report of Rich’s computer — generated within 96 hours after Rich’s murder — showed he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time…”
“I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,” the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.
The Fox News report adds:
The federal investigator, who requested anonymity, said 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between Democratic National Committee leaders, spanning from January 2015 through late May 2016, were transferred from Rich to MacFadyen before May 21.
In response to Wheeler’s allegations, the Rich family is pushing back:
“We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence,” the family said in a statement earlier Tuesday. “The services of the private investigator who spoke to press was offered to the Rich family and paid for by a third party, and contractually was barred from speaking to press or anyone outside of law enforcement or the family unless explicitly authorized by the family.”
Additionally, according to Seitz-Wald, two FBI officials categorically deny the reports that Rich’s computer was ever in possession of the agency, and another “law enforcement official with first-hand knowledge of Rich’s laptop” says the computer does not contain any DNC/WikiLeaks emails:
“It never contained any e-mails related to WikiLeaks, and the FBI never had it,” the person said.
The D.C. Metropolitan Police are also calling this a bogus story:
“The assertions put forward by Mr. Wheeler are unfounded… The Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) Homicide Branch is actively investigating Mr. Rich’s murder and we continue to work with the family to bring closure to this case as we do with all homicide investigations.”
In terms of credibility, it’s important to note that Rod Wheeler is the same man who appeared on The Bill O’Reilly Show in 2007, and said there was a vast network of “pink pistol” toting lesbian gangs who were indoctrinating young children into homosexuality.
So there’s that.