Merged: Was Seth Rich the DNC Wiki-leaker?/FOX News peddling conspiracy theory

[Skeptic Tank]

http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/254852337-story

Quote:

"WASHINGTON - It has been almost a year since Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered in the nation's capital. There have been no solid answers about why he was killed until now.

Rich was shot and killed last July in Northwest D.C and police have suggested the killing in the District's Bloomingdale neighborhood was a botched robbery. However, online conspiracy theories have tied the murder to Rich's work at the DNC.

Just two months shy of the one-year anniversary of Rich's death, FOX 5 has learned there is new information that could prove these theorists right.

Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by the Rich family, suggests there is tangible evidence on Rich's laptop that confirms he was communicating with WikiLeaks prior to his death."

Quote:

"Fox News is now reporting through the anonymous source 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.”"

http://heavy.com/news/2017/05/seth-r...macfadyen-dnc/

Assange has repeatedly said that the DNC stuff was a leak from someone on the inside, and not a Russian hack at all. He's also been coy about whether Rich was the leaker.

Thoughts?

[KDLarsen]

Assange trustworthiness requires quite a bit of zoom to locate, and given that WikiLeaks has now acquired a reputation as Putin's stooge, it's hardly surprising that Assange is trying to deflect attention away from the Russians.

Having said that, what would be the motive for Seth Rich to be behind the DNC leaks?

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Tank

http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/254852337-story


http://heavy.com/news/2017/05/seth-r...macfadyen-dnc/

Assange has repeatedly said that the DNC stuff was a leak from someone on the inside, and not a Russian hack at all. He's also been coy about whether Rich was the leaker.

Thoughts?

I don't believe it. The police are convinced Rich was killed in a burglary gone wrong.

Quote:

Ed Butowsky, a Fox News regular who has written articles for Breitbart News, contacted the parents of Seth Rich and urged them to hire a private investigator to look into the death of their 27-year-old son, who was shot and killed last July in what police say was a robbery gone wrong. Butowsky offered to cover the fees and connect them with an investigator, according to Brad Bauman, a spokesman for the family.

The Rich family hired the detective who had been recommended, Rod Wheeler, a former D.C. homicide detective who is also a Fox News contributor and who last month tweeted a photo of himself at the White House captioned, "Doing my part to Make America Great Again!!"

Wheeler said on Monday there was evidence to support the conspiracy theories, including that Rich had been in contact with WikiLeaks before his death — prompting a quick rebuke from both the police and Rich's family.

This is Vince Foster Breitbat conspiracy crap.

[Skeptic Tank]

Originally Posted by KDLarsen

Assange trustworthiness requires quite a bit of zoom to locate, and given that WikiLeaks has now acquired a reputation as Putin's stooge, it's hardly surprising that Assange is trying to deflect attention away from the Russians.

Having said that, what would be the motive for Seth Rich to be behind the DNC leaks?

Similar to motivations of leakers in the past?

Felt that the organization he was part of was corrupt and it needed exposing?

[acbytesla]

The FBI completely dismissed the Fox News claim that an FBI analysis of a computer belonging to Rich contained thousands of e-mails to and from WikiLeaks.

Local police in Washington, D.C., never even gave the FBI Rich's laptop to analyze after his murder, according to the current FBI official.

Law enforcement officials with first-hand knowledge of Rich's laptop said the claim was bogus. "It never contained any e-mails related to WikiLeaks, and the FBI never had it,"

[Roger Ramjets]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

Law enforcement officials with first-hand knowledge of Rich's laptop said the claim was bogus.

They're in on it!

The DNC, Local police, the FBI, 65,853,516 people who voted for Hillary - they're all in on it!!!

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by Roger Ramjets

They're in on it!

The DNC, Local police, the FBI, 65,853,516 people who voted for Hillary - they're all in on it!!!

There is a deception industry selling conspiracy theories. It doesn't matter how outlandish. And their customers are InfoWars, Breitbart, Fox and right wing talk radio shows. There probably are something equivalent on the left, but I can't think of it.

[cmikes]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

The FBI completely dismissed the Fox News claim that an FBI analysis of a computer belonging to Rich contained thousands of e-mails to and from WikiLeaks.

Local police in Washington, D.C., never even gave the FBI Rich's laptop to analyze after his murder, according to the current FBI official.

Law enforcement officials with first-hand knowledge of Rich's laptop said the claim was bogus. "It never contained any e-mails related to WikiLeaks, and the FBI never had it,"

Ah, but the real question is were there any emails to Anthony "Carlos Danger" Wiener on his laptop?

On a more serious note, I remember reading that a lot of the WikiLeaks stuff was from actual leaks, not the phishing type scams that got John Podesta. So while there's nothing saying that this guy was the source, there apparently was some DNC staffer or staffers that were unhappy with the direction they were taking. Most likely a Bernie supporter that was against the whole "ready for Hillary and only Hillary" thing since most of the leaks were about the DNC's campaign against one of their own candidates.

[Trebuchet]

Cue tweet from Trump parroting this crap in 3...2...1...

[PhantomWolf]

Originally Posted by cmikes

Most likely a Bernie supporter that was against the whole "ready for Hillary and only Hillary" thing since most of the leaks were about the DNC's campaign against one of their own candidates.

Except that a quick look at the dates those emails were sent explains pretty quickly why there was a "ready for Hillary and only Hillary" thing happening. It was numerically impossible for Sanders to win at the point the emails were sent. The DNC was getting frustrated that he was refusing to bow out when it was impossible to win, but instead carried on potentially damaging the Democratic brand in the General.

[Roger Ramjets]

Originally Posted by cmikes

a lot of the WikiLeaks stuff was from actual leaks, not the phishing type scams that got John Podesta.

How would you tell the difference?

[Stacko]

Story on DNC staffer's murder dominated conservative media -- hours later it fell apart

Quote:

But Tuesday afternoon, Wheeler told CNN he had no evidence to suggest Rich had contacted Wikileaks before his death.

Wheeler instead said he only learned about the possible existence of such evidence through the reporter he spoke to for the FoxNews.com story. He explained that the comments he made to WTTG-TV were intended to simply preview Fox News' Tuesday story. The WTTG-TV news director did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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

Asked about a quote attributed to him in the Fox News story in which he said his "investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and Wikileaks," Wheeler said he was referring to information that had already been reported in the media.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

I don't believe it. The police are convinced Rich was killed in a burglary gone wrong.

This is Vince Foster Breitbat conspiracy crap.

Complete with claiming Hilary killed the guy.

[Stacko]

In what I'm sure is a coincidence, the story was spurred into the limelight today by twitter bots.

[ChristianProgressive]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Tank

Assange has repeatedly said that the DNC stuff was a leak from someone on the inside, and not a Russian hack at all. He's also been coy about whether Rich was the leaker.

Thoughts?

Classic Russian intelligence procedure to use inside men and plants to further disorient and discourage the target. They also are not above burning their own people if it further damages the target.

First their plant gets them access to the target. Then they use their plant to further discredit the target by shifting blame onto the target itself. Then they off the plant to further damage the target with susupicion of murder/coverup.

Win-win-win for the FSB, and all it cost was one low-level agent or turned asset.

[Bob001]

D.C. police and the guy's own family say no truth to the rumors. He was killed in a "changing" neighborhood (meaning bad, but used to be worse). A mugging makes more sense than anything else.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...e8c_story.html

[zorro99]

So Fox News source for the claim is this private dick, and the private dick says his source for the claim is Fox News. Did I get that right? Whoever paid that private dick should get a refund.

[TraneWreck]

Hmm, so the FBI was in collusion with Hillary to cover up the murder. Exactly why the FBI intervened to submarine her campaign.

It all makes sense.

[Locknar]

Please do not discuss forum moderation in thread; discussion re the move of this thread to Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories has been split to FMF and can be found here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=319647

Posted By:Locknar

[Arcade22]

Quote:

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a stalwart supporter of President Trump, used a Sunday-morning appearance on “Fox and Friends” to spread the conspiracy theory that former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was killed last year to cover up the true story of how WikiLeaks obtained tens of thousands of hacked Democratic Party emails.

“We have this very strange story now of this young man who worked for the Democratic National Committee, who apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning, having given WikiLeaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments,” Gingrich said.

“Nobody’s investigating that, and what does that tell you about what’s going on? Because it turns out, it wasn’t the Russians. It was this young guy who, I suspect, was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee. He’s been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigative his murder. So I’d like to see how [Robert S.] Mueller [III] is going to define what his assignment is.”

Mueller has been appointed as a special counsel to oversee a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and any Russian collusion with Trump’s campaign.

With no pushback from the Fox hosts, Gingrich shared innuendos that got new life last week after Rod Wheeler, an occasional contributor to Fox News whom a conservative donor had paid to probe Rich’s death, told local Fox affiliate WTTG 5 that he had new evidence. On Monday, Wheeler claimed to have sources at either the FBI or the D.C. police department who apparently knew that evidence existed of Rich — who was fatally shot in July — contacting WikiLeaks but that an unnamed person had told investigators to “stand down.”

By Thursday, after follow-up questioning from CNN and NBC News, Wheeler had largely recanted his story, and Rich’s family had rejected Wheeler’s most explosive claim — that Rich’s laptop was in police custody. But Friday, and over the weekend, Fox News host Sean Hannity continued to suggest that Rich was killed in a cover-up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...n-dnc-staffer/

This is one of the reasons why American politics is so terrible and if not completely irredeemable. The extreme level of stupidity that Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets disseminate is one of the major reasons why someone as stupid, flawed and completely unqualified as Trump could win the presidency.

White trash Americans, or "working whites" as they like to call themselves, are dumb yet don't realize how stupid they are. They are suspicious, cynical and jaded yet still swallow the lies and false promises of someone like Trump hook, line and sinker.

[Minoosh]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...n-dnc-staffer/

This is one of the reasons why American politics is so terrible and if not completely irredeemable. The extreme level of stupidity that Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets disseminate is one of the major reasons why someone as stupid, flawed and completely unqualified as Trump could win the presidency.

White trash Americans, or "working whites" as they like to call themselves, are dumb yet don't realize how stupid they are. They are suspicious, cynical and jaded yet still swallow the lies and false promises of someone like Trump hook, line and sinker.

It is more ignorance than stupidity, IMO. And calling a group "white trash" is inadvisable at the least. I know where you're coming from, but don't agree with the phrasing.

[autumn1971]

Even using the words "stand down," which is a known trigger for right-wing snowflakes.

[Tony Stark]

Right wing "news" outlets have been pushing this conspiracy conspiracy in order to distract the marks from all the Trump scandals and keep them focused on how evil Democrats are instead.

[Childlike Empress]

The "300 lbs Hacker (Trump)" Kim Dotcom has announced (and informed Hannity on twitter about it today or yesterday) to release a statement Tuesday about him knowing that Seth Rich was the DNC leak source because he was directly involved. Also, the testimony of wikileaks associate Craig Murray is quite directly pointing to Rich long before this additional FOX story. No wonder the Washington Pest fake news department is squeaking overloudly - can't have the Russian conspiracy theory undermined...

edit - Good read here: Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the Sinister Stewards of the National Security State

[The_Animus]

I was listening to a public radio segment where they talked about the 4 phases the right wing and their media go through when a big Trump-Russia story breaks.

Phase 1: Silence

Phase 2: Start counter narrative. The source used is anonymous or unreliable, they have their own sources who will claim it can't be true or there is no evidence.

Phase 3: Change the news cycle to another story to distract from the real story. In this case the DNC Staffer conspiracy, which even though this is old news, is brought up again with supposedly new evidence which is quickly debunked but by then it's too late and the narrative has done its job.

Phase 4: Claim that Fox was about to break the DNC Staffer story, and it was actually the Washington Post who quickly released the fake Russia story to distract from the DNC Staffer story.

[Hercules56]

This sickens me.

I hope the Rich family sues the pants off Fox News.

[Hercules56]

How come the Clintons murdered Seth Rich but left the following people alive:

Ken Starr

Linda Tripp

Monica Lewinsky

Jennifer Flowers

Kathleen Willey

[Hercules56]

Originally Posted by TraneWreck

Hmm, so the FBI was in collusion with Hillary to cover up the murder. Exactly why the FBI intervened to submarine her campaign.

It all makes sense.

Oh, it gets even better!!

I hear that the CIA possess Malware that can be used to hack into a computer and leave a fingerprint that makes it look like Russian hackers did the hacking!!

That means the CIA hacked into the DNC and Jon Podesta's email, released tens of thousands of emails to Wikileaks, so that Hillary would lose the election, Trump could attack America's intelligence community, and the CIA achieves what exactly?

[logger]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

This sickens me.

I hope the Rich family sues the pants off Fox News.

Lol
Might they rather want their sons murder solved?

Leftists would do anything to cover for their precious god liberalism. Even ignore a mans murder.

[Hercules56]

Originally Posted by logger

Lol
Might they rather want their sons murder solved?

Leftists would do anything to cover for their precious god liberalism. Even ignore a mans murder.

The police are following all the leads that exist.

So far the best evidence says it was a botched robbery.

[TheGoldcountry]

Originally Posted by logger

Lol
Might they rather want their sons murder solved?

Leftists would do anything to cover for their precious god liberalism. Even ignore a mans murder.

No one suggested anything of the sort.

If one needs to lie to support their arguments, perhaps they should consider bowing out of the discussion.

[Hercules56]

Originally Posted by TheGoldcountry

No one suggested anything of the sort.

If one needs to lie to support their arguments, perhaps they should consider bowing out of the discussion.

Didn't you hear? The Clintons have been murdering people with impunity for decades.

Paying off countless federal and local authorities to ignore their obvious crimes. The cover has involved thousands of co-conspirators and $600 billion in hush money.

[shemp]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

Didn't you hear? The Clintons have been murdering people with impunity for decades.

Paying off countless federal and local authorities to ignore their obvious crimes. The cover has involved thousands of co-conspirators and $600 billion in hush money.

No wonder they need those huge speaking fees!

[shemp]

Originally Posted by logger

Lol
Might they rather want their sons murder solved?

Leftists would do anything to cover for their precious god liberalism. Even ignore a mans murder.

Horse hockey!

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

[Roger Ramjets]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

Didn't you hear? The Clintons have been murdering people with impunity for decades.

Paying off countless federal and local authorities to ignore their obvious crimes. The cover has involved thousands of co-conspirators and $600 billion in hush money.

I know this is true because I was directly involved.

[rdwight]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

edit - Good read here: Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the Sinister Stewards of the National Security State

You find that to be a good read? Every assertion they make is unsupported by anything but 'matter of fact' phrasing. I love me a good conspiracy theory to engulf myself in before looking at the counter argument, but this is too lazy to even enjoy the ride.

[Hercules56]

Fox is just desperate to take attention away from the Trump-Russia scandal.

Next week they will accuse Hillary of bringing down the World Trade Center.

[Brainster]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

White trash Americans, or "working whites" as they like to call themselves, are dumb yet don't realize how stupid they are. They are suspicious, cynical and jaded yet still swallow the lies and false promises of someone like Trump hook, line and sinker.

Seriously, you're going to use the term "white trash" to talk about how stupid other people are?

[Puppycow]

Originally Posted by Brainster

Seriously, you're going to use the term "white trash" to talk about how stupid other people are?

This is why Trump is president.

[Stacko]

Originally Posted by Hercules56

How come the Clintons murdered Seth Rich but left the following people alive:

Ken Starr

Linda Tripp

Monica Lewinsky

Jennifer Flowers

Kathleen Willey

If the Clinton's were murdering people, Anthony Weiner would have been long dead.