Even though the Seth Rich conspiracy theories WorldNetDaily heavily promoted were false — and it’s likely that it knew they were false at the time it was reporting them — it refuses to correct the record, even as key figures who joined WND in promoting those conspiracy theories, such as Fox News and Ed Butowsky, have retracted their claims as part of settling defamation lawsuits against them filed by Rich’s family. Even though WND has thus far avoided getting sued itself, it continues to perpetuate the false conspiracy.
Thus, we have an April 26 article by Bob Unruh:
The FBI, in its release of heavily redacted documents regarding murdered Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich, has included a cryptic “pay for his death” note.
Rich was the DNC employee who was shot and killed as he walked to his Washington, D.C., home at about 4 a.m. on July 10, 2016. There was evidence of a struggle, with his hands, knees and face bruised, yet he had two shots in his back. Police determined it was a robbery, but his wallet and other items were not taken. Two weeks later, WikiLeaks began releasing DNC emails damaging to Hillary Clinton, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange mentioned Rich on Dutch TV: “Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. There’s 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.”
Now, One America News reports the FBI’s release of records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request “appear to show that an undisclosed entity either wanted to pay or actually paid a lot of money to get Seth Rich killed.”
An FBI document dated Nov. 7, 2017, states: “Given [redacted] it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death.”
Unruh, however, is too committed to the conspiracy to tell reader that this proves nothing. As blogger Emptywheel explains, the document in which the “pay for his death” statement appears “may reflect the FBI investigation into allegations that someone tried to hack Rich’s email.” Indeed, the whole tranche of FBI documents isn’t worth much since the FBI didn’t do the primary investigation into Rich’s death.
In other words, this is a lot of nothing. But Unruh’s mandate is to perpetuate the conspiracy, so he uncritically quotes OAN complaining that “Democrats and mainstream media have baselessly dismissed Rich’s murder as a ‘conspiracy theory’ and claimed it was a robbery, although none of his valuable items was taken.”
Needless to say, Unruh was silent on all the retractions and apologies its compatriots have made to Rich’s family.