In Rare Move, Infowars Issues Retraction And Apology For Seth Rich Reporting

It isn’t often that a conspiracy theory is so completely debunked as the Seth Rich conspiracy has been. In fact, in a rare move for the conspiracy website, Infowars has published a retraction of a story about the alleged conspiracy to murder Rich and apologized to his family.

The Infowars retraction specifically references an article by Corsi published on March 5, 2018, titled, “Anti-Trump Left Tries to Revive Dying ‘Russia’ Narrative by Blaming Roger Stone.”  The retraction reads in part, “Dr. Corsi acknowledges that his allegations were not based upon any independent factual knowledge regarding Seth or Aaron Rich. Instead, Dr. Corsi relied primarily on, and quoted from, a column by Adm. James Lyons (Ret.) that was published in the Washington Times on March 2, 2018, but was retracted on September 30, 2018.”

“It was not Dr. Corsi’s intent to rely upon inaccurate information, or to cause any suffering to Mr. Rich’s family,” the retraction continues. “To that end, Dr. Corsi retracts the article and apologizes to the Rich family.”

The Washington Times retracted their version of the article on Sept. 30, 2018, with a statement that says Adm. Lyons “included statements about Aaron Rich, the brother of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, that we now believe to be false.” The Times retraction specifically identifies two statements in the article as being completely false. One was Lyon’s statement that “it is well known in the intelligence circles that Seth Rich and his brother Aaron and his brother, Aaron Rich, downloaded the DNC emails and was paid by Wikileaks for that information.” The second false statement was the claim that Aaron Rich had not been interviewed or cooperated with authorities.

Back in November 2018, The Resurgent noted that filings from the Mueller investigation showed that emails showed Corsi was aware that the foreign hackers stole the DNC emails as early as August 2016 even though he continued to push the idea that Seth Rich was the culprit and was murdered in retaliation for two more years.

I’ve been involved in debunking several Infowars claims in the past and apologies and retractions for the site’s wacky conspiracy articles are rare. The site was one of the right-wing media outlets that promoted the idea that President Obama was about to declare martial law in the Southwestern United States back in 2015 The site and its owner, Alex Jones, were heavily involved in promoting the claim that the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged and famously claimed that chemicals in the water were turning frogs gay.

The only other apology or retraction that Jones seems to have ever issued involved the 2016 pizzagate conspiracy theory. The claim was that Democratic politicians including Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, DC pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong.

After a true believer fired several shots into the restaurant in December 2016, Jones issued an apology, writing, “I want our viewers and listeners to know that we regret any negative impact our commentaries may have had on [Comet Ping Pong owner James] Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong, or its employees. We apologize to the extent our commentaries could be construed as negative statements about Mr. Alefantis or Comet Ping Pong, and we hope that anyone else involved in commenting on Pizzagate will do the same thing.”

There are still people who believe the pizzagate claims, however. Comet Ping Pong still receives prank calls and, in January 2019, someone broke into the restaurant and started a fire. It isn’t known whether the fire is related to the conspiracy theory, but it is definitely possible since there are still people online who believe against all evidence that prominent Democrats are selling children into sex slavery.

It’s likely that the retraction from Corsi and Infowars will leave many of the tinfoil hat crowd unconvinced. It’s easy to go a step further and believe that Corsi and Infowars were pressured into the retraction to cover up the truth. Conspiracy believers will rationalize away any contradictory information. Everything, they believe, is being manipulated by some dark force such as the Deep State, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, or the villain du jour.

Now, if only Sean Hannity, another main pusher of the fake news story about Rich, would issue his own apology to the family. Hannity continued to push the conspiracy theory long after Fox News retracted the story in May 2017.

Still, any retraction and apology from Jones and Corsi is a victory. The Seth Rich conspiracy theory is a good reminder of how the term “fake news” came to be. The apology will hopefully allow the Rich family to have a measure of peace from conspiracy activists. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

The Mueller Team Just Blew Up The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators just debunked the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. As part of the draft document against conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, Mueller’s team cites an email that purports to show that Corsi knew full well that the DNC emails were stolen by Russian hackers in 2016, even as they advanced the baseless theory that Seth Rich, a DNC staffer, stole the emails as part of an inside job and was murdered in retribution.

Earlier this month, Corsi, an Infowars contributor who has also authored books questioning Barack Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship, predicted that he would be indicted by Mueller’s investigation. Corsi recently said that he was offered a plea deal, which he plans to reject. As evidence of his claim, he posted the draft Statement of Offense online.

The document alleges that Corsi was approached in the summer of 2016 by “Person 1,” apparently Roger Stone, who asked him to get in touch with “Organization 1,” WikiLeaks, about the release of the stolen emails. Stone was a top Trump advisor until August 2015 and the two men were longtime friends who apparently kept in contact even after Stone left the Trump campaign. Per the draft, Corsi falsely claimed that he rebuffed Stone’s request and never contacted WikiLeaks.

Per the DOJ, Corsi contacted Julian Assange, who was in hiding in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Corsi then related to Stone that WikiLeaks was in possession of documents damaging to Hillary Clinton and that WikiLeaks planned to release the documents as part of an October surprise.

As evidence, the draft cites a string of emails in which Stone instructs Corsi to contact Assange in July 2016. The first email, in which Stone asked Corsi to contact WikiLeaks, is dated July 25, three days after the initial WikiLeaks dump of 20,000 stolen emails. Two days later, on July 27, Donald Trump called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s private server. The indictment of Russian intelligence agents last July indicated that the Russian hackers spear-phished the Clinton campaign for the first time the same day that Trump made his request.

In the second email, dated July 31, 2016, Stone told Corsi that an unnamed “overseas individual” should “see [the founder of Organization 1],” Assange. The overseas individual was possibly Ted Malloch, an American Trump supporter living and working in England who was reportedly considered for an ambassadorship to the European Union by President Trump.

In an email dated August 2, 2016, Corsi responds:

“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.… Time to let more than [the Clinton Campaign chairman] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]. That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke -- neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.”

On August 12, the hacker Guccifer 2.0 posted contact information for most congressional Democrats. The information apparently came from the stolen DNC data.

Even though Corsi acknowledged that hackers were responsible in his August 2, 2016 email, he continued to publicly espouse the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was murdered by the CIA on the orders of John Brennan for the benefit of Hillary Clinton well into 2017 on Twitter, in Infowars articles, and in YouTube videos.

On August 21, 2016, Roger Stone, whose account is now suspended, tweeted, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary.” Another Stone tweet on Oct. 3 said, “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp.” The next day, Julian Assange released a video announcing that WikiLeaks would be releasing more DNC emails, these stolen from John Podesta. On Oct. 7, hours after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, the next document dump from WikiLeaks is released.

Corsi now says that on August 30, Stone contacted him for help in concocting a cover story to explain the Podesta tweet. Corsi says he wrote a memo about Podesta’s business dealings which Stone claimed was the inspiration for his eerily prescient tweet. Stone denies this version of events, but the Mueller team’s computer analysis may sort out the truth.

“What I construct, and what I testified to the grand jury, was I believed I was creating a cover story for Roger because Roger wanted to explain this tweet,” Mr. Corsi said in the Wall Street Journal. “By the way, the special counsel knew this. They can virtually tell my keystrokes on that computer.”

Stone has denied any knowledge of coordination between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. He also denies that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are de facto Russian agents, a fact disputed by US intelligence. Mike Pompeo, a Republican and President Trump’s pick to head the CIA, called WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service.” The group even had a television show on RT, a Russian propaganda network, in 2012.

The document posted by Corsi raise interesting questions about contacts between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, but it offers definitive proof that the Seth Rich conspiracy theory was never seriously believed by either Corsi or Stone. It was merely a smokescreen to conceal the fact that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC and ultimately used their stolen emails to help elect Donald Trump.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Kim Dotcom Claims He Knew Seth Rich

Accused software pirate and internet entrepreneur, Kim Dotcom, has released a statement claiming that he communicated with murdered DNC staffer, Seth Rich. Dotcom posted the statement on his website.  

According to Dotcom’s account, he met Rich online, when a person with the handle, “Panda,” contacted him about starting a US branch of Dotcom’s Internet Party in 2014. Dotcom claims that Panda was actually Seth Rich, but does not explain how he learned Panda’s identity. Dotcom does not say if he ever met Panda or Rich in person.

Dotcom said that the referred to what he had learned from Panda when discussed WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, in a 2015 interview with Bloomberg (shorter clip here). When asked about a tweet in which he said that he would be “Hillary’s worst nightmare in 2016,” Dotcom answered, “Well, I have to say it’s probably more Julian. But I’m aware of some of the things that are going to be roadblocks for her.” When pressed, Dotcom denied that he knew specifically what Assange had planned.

In the statement, Dotcom declined to give further details, saying “my full statement should be provided to the authorities and I am prepared to do that so that there can be a full investigation.” Dotcom asked for “a guarantee from Special Counsel Mueller, on behalf of the United States, of safe passage from New Zealand to the United States and back” if he is required to come to the US to present his evidence. Dotcom is currently fighting extradition from New Zealand to the US, where he faces charges of money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud.

The family of Seth Rich rejected Dotcom’s claims and pointed out that he had provided no evidence to substantiate his claims. “The Rich family is tired of having to respond to accusations,” a spokesman for the family said in a statement. “The burden of proof is on Mr. Dotcom to either prove he has evidence or face the consequences of damaging Seth’s good name and creating more emotional hardship on a grieving family. The family is not going to entertain his ridiculous, manipulative and completely non-credible statements.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

True facts about Seth Rich

http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com

It has been less than a year since the murder of Seth Rich. In that short time, the story of his murder has taken on a life of its own. Like the murder of John F. Kennedy, it has already difficult to separate fact from fiction in the tragic case of Seth Rich.

Seth Conrad Rich was a 27-year-old native of Omaha, Nebraska who worked for the Democratic National Committee as the Voter Expansion Data Director. His job there entailed working on a computer applicationto help voters find their local polling place.

On the morning of Sunday, July 10, 2016, Rich was walking home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. At 4:19 a.m., police patrolling the area heard gunshots and used Sharp Spotter, a system that uses acoustics to determine to direction of shots, to locate the scene of the attack.

Multiple sources say that Rich was still alive when police arrived at the scene, which was only a block from his house. He had multiple gunshot wounds and there were signs of a struggle. Early reports, such as this one from a local CBS affiliate, state that Rich was alive and conscious when he was taken to the hospital where he died a few hours later. Police have never revealed whether he was able to provide information about his killer.

Other early reports do support the claim that none of Rich’s personal items seemed to be missing. The local NBC affiliate quoted Rich’s mother, Mary, who said, “There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything. They took his life for literally no reason. They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life.” Rich’s father, Joel, also confirmed to the Washington Post that nothing was taken.

The New York Daily News reported on July 11 that police had said that there was no indication of robbery, but that attempted robbery had not been ruled out as a motive for the attack. Joel Rich said that he believed that Seth had attempted to fight off his attacker before he was killed.

Many of the sources also point out the high crime rate in the neighborhood where Rich was killed. NBC’s Channel Four pointed out that robberies using guns were up 12 percent in the Metro Police Fifth District and that seven people had already been killed there in addition to Rich that year. The New York Daily News noted that armed robberies had doubled in Bloomingdale over the previous year.

Almost two weeks after Rich’s murder, on July 22, the first dump of Democrat emails from WikiLeaks was posted. Even as the emails were posted, there was immediate speculation that the source of the emails was of Russian origin. The date range of the first DNC hack was from January 2015 through May 2016, about two months before Rich’s murder. A second trove emails stolen from John Podesta was dumped by WikiLeaks beginning on October 7, 2016, three months after Rich’s death.

The conspiracy theories seemed to have started within days of the murder. On July 13, a conspiracy site called Whatdoesitmean.com cited a Kremlin intelligence report that said that Rich was preparing to meet with FBI agents in order to testify against Hillary Clinton. The story reports that the FBI agents were really a “hit team” that was then “captured yesterday after a running gun battle with US federal police forces just blocks from the White House.” There were no reports of captured hit men or “running gun battles” in other sources.

The WikiLeaks angle to the story came several weeks later. WikiLeaks founder and accused rapist, Julian Assange, appeared on Dutch television on August 9, almost a month after the murder, and hinted that Rich was the source of the pilfered emails, although he never expressly stated any connection with Rich.

The same day, WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Rich’s murderer. The District of Columbia Metropolitan Police had previously offered a $25,000 reward. Other individuals, including Rich’s brother, have offered additional rewards.

On May 15, 2017, a private detective named Rod Wheeler told a local television news reporter that he had evidence that Rich had contacted WikiLeaks before his death. Two days later, Wheeler retracted his claims. NBC News reported that Ed Butowsky, a Dallas businessman and Breitbart contributor, hired Wheeler to investigate the murder on behalf of the Rich family. Butowsky initially denied being connected to Wheeler, but eventually admitted his involvement to CNN. A spokesman for the family said that Wheeler had showed them no evidence to support the allegations that Seth had contacted WikiLeaks.

Police also told the Washington Post that Rich’s computer and email had been examined and that there was no evidence that he was connected to WikiLeaks. A former law enforcement official with knowledge of Rich’s laptop told NBC News, “It never contained any e-mails related to WikiLeaks, and the FBI never had it.”

Still, the rumors keep coming. The Russian embassy tweeted on May 19 that Rich was the “WikiLeaks informer” and accused the US media of ignoring the truth about his murder. At about the same time, Kim Dotcom, a European hacker fighting extradition to the US from New Zealand on money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud charges, claimed to have known Seth Rich as the WikiLeaks source.

District of Columbia Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kevin Donohue recently told NBC’s local affiliate that Rich’s murder was still under investigation, but that there was no truth the WikiLeaks rumors. “This is a robbery that ended tragically. That’s bad enough for our city, and I think it is irresponsible to conflate this into something that doesn’t connect to anything that the detectives have found," Donahue said. "No WikiLeaks connection.”

If Rich’s murder is still unsolved, the mystery of the DNC hacking is not. In January 2017, the Director of National Intelligence released an unclassified version of a report detailing the unanimous assessment of the American intelligence community that the Russian government was behind the cyberattack. The assessment echoed the findings of CrowdStrike, a private cybersecurity firm retained by the DNC.

In the case of John Podesta’s emails, investigators have identified a fraudulent email that urged Podesta to click a link and change his password. Podesta did so and compromised his email password as a result. This sort of breach is known as “phishing.”

Time reported in January that the CIA had even identified the individual Russian officials who had passed the stolen emails to WikiLeaks. The report said that the information followed a “circuitous route” to WikiLeaks so that Assange could plausibly deny Russian involvement.

At this point, there are a few basic problems with the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was the source for the stolen Democratic Party emails. First, Rich was murdered before WikiLeaks published the emails. Second, the DNC’s internal investigation pointed to the Russians, not an internal leaker, as the source of the breach. Third, US counterintelligence has identified the real perpetrators of the theft, the Russian government. Most importantly, there is not a shred of evidence that ties Rich to WikiLeaks other than unsubstantiated innuendo. There is not even evidence that Rich had access to the emails that ended up the hands of WikiLeaks.

Conversely, it would be logical for the Russians and WikiLeaks to implicate the conveniently dead Rich in the leak to distract attention from the real culprits. Intelligence agencies agreed that the Russian covert operation that interfered with the election seemed to be partly to sow chaos and partly to help Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Even with Trump in the White House, Vladimir Putin seems to relish causing chaos and doubt about the US government.

Rich’s family, who have the most to gain in seeing their son’s killers brought to justice, reject the conspiracy claims. Rather than embracing the conspiracy, the family released a statement that called upon the conspiracy theorists to stop defaming their son’s reputation and distracting attention from the real killers. “We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence that surfaces every few months to fill the void and distract law enforcement and the general public from finding Seth's murderers,” the statement said.

“It's sad but unsurprising that a group of media outlets who have repeatedly lied to the American people would try and manipulate the legacy of a murder victim in order to forward their own political agenda,” a spokesman for the family told Business Insider. “I think there is a special place in hell for people like that.”

Originally published on The Resurgent