The 27-year-old Rich was an employee of the
Democratic National Committee (DNC), and his murder spawned several
right-wingconspiracy theories,
[2] including the false claim that Rich had been involved with the
leaked DNC emails in 2016, contradicted by the law enforcement branches that investigated the murder.
[3][4] It was also contradicted by the July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents for hacking the e-mail accounts and networks of Democratic Party officials
[5] and by the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion the leaked DNC emails were part of
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
[3][4][6] Fact-checking websites like
PolitiFact.com,
[4][7] Snopes.com,
[8] and
FactCheck.org stated that these theories were false and unfounded.
[3]The New York Times,
Los Angeles Times, and
The Washington Post wrote that the promotion of these conspiracy theories was an example of
fake news.
[9][10][11]
Rich's parents condemned the conspiracy theorists and said that these individuals were exploiting their son's death for political gain, and their spokesperson called the conspiracy theorists "disgusting sociopaths".
[12][13][14] They requested a retraction and apology from
Fox News after the network promoted the conspiracy theory,
[15] and sent a
cease and desist letter to the investigator Fox News used.
[4][14][15] The investigator stated that he had no evidence to back up the claims which Fox News attributed to him.
[3][4][16] Fox News issued a retraction, but did not apologize or publicly explain what went wrong.
[17] In return, the Rich family filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News in March 2018,
[18] which was dismissed in August 2018, when a judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to prove "extreme and outrageous" conduct by the defendants under the legal standard.
[19]
