After years of outrageous and bogus conspiracy theories in right-wing media, the brother of Seth Rich — a Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered in July 2016 — is getting a retraction and an apology from a DC-based conservative newspaper.
The Washington Times, the newspaper that spread rumors not only about Set Rich’s death but also accused his brother, Aaron, of being involved, issued a formal retraction today on its website, and apologized to Aaron Rich and his family.
Here is the retraction and apology in its entirety:
Seth Rich was murdered in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC, in July 2016 in what appeared to be a botched robbery.
Seth worked at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as the director of voter expansion data, and amid the leaked DNC emails during the 2016 election, his death became a source of conspiracy theories across right-wing media, including Fox News but also dozens of smaller websites and outlets.
The retraction is the first big legal win for the Rich family as it continues to fight back against false allegations that Rich was the source of the DNC emails WikiLeaks shared widely in July of 2016 (he wasn’t) and that he was killed because of his involvement.
The Seth Rich conspiracy theory in short, alleged that Seth Rich was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential candidacy and that he released the DNC emails after Sanders lost the Democratic nomination.
The theory gained a massive following among many on the Right, including Fox News’s Sean Hannity, even after Rich’s parents wrote a Washington Post opinion piece sharing their ordeal and asking for the rumormongering to stop.