Exclusive: The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. A Yahoo News investigation.
Not sure if anyone saw this.
WASHINGTON In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton, giving rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside President Trumps White House, a Yahoo News investigation has found.
Russias foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony bulletin disguised to read as a real intelligence report about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.
The purported details in the SVR account seemed improbable on their face: that Rich, a data director in the DNCs voter protection division, was on his way to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Clinton when he was slain in the early hours of a Sunday morning by the former secretary of states hit squad.
Yet in a graphic example of how fake news infects the internet, those precise details popped up the same day on an obscure website, whatdoesitmean.com, that is a frequent vehicle for Russian propaganda. The websites article, which attributed its claims to Russian intelligence, was the first known instance of Richs murder being publicly linked to a political conspiracy.
To me, having a foreign intelligence agency set up one of my decedents with lies and planting false stories, to me thats pretty outrageous, said Deborah Sines, the former assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the Rich case until her retirement last year. Maybe other people dont think its that outrageous. I did ... once it became clear to me that this was coming from the SVR, then that triggers a lot of very serious [questions about] What do I do with this?
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-the-true-origins-of-the-seth-rich-conspiracy-a-yahoo-news-investigation-100000831.html