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Debunking

The conspiracy theories have been debunked by law enforcement,[3][4] as well as by fact-checking websites like PolitiFact.com,[4][7] Snopes.com,[8] and FactCheck.org.[3][not in citation given]

The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia described the murder as related to a bungled attempted robbery,[3] and said "the assertions put forward by Mr. Wheeler are unfounded."[3] The FBI told PolitiFact.com that the MPD was investigating the homicide.[7]

Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham said the police had no information suggesting a connection between Rich's death and data obtained by WikiLeaks.[27]

People who worked with Rich said he was not an expert computer hacker helping to leak information to foreigners. Andrew Therriault, a data scientist who had mentored Rich, said although he had recently been working as a programmer, this "wasn't his background", and another co-worker said Rich was very upset when he heard hackers associated with Russian intelligence services had broken into the DNC computers and could be interfering with the election.[41]

Rich family representative, Brad Bauman, responding to the conspiracy theorists' claim that the FBI was investigating the case said, "The FBI is not now and has never been a party to this investigation."[3]

FactCheck.org analyzed statements by Newt Gingrich related to the conspiracy theory, where Gingrich said Rich "apparently was assassinated" subsequent to "having given WikiLeaks something like … 53,000 [DNC] emails and 17,000 attachments".[3] FactCheck.org determined this claim was "unsupported" and determined "there's no evidence for his claim."[3]

PolitiFact.com said the assertion that Rich gave emails to WikiLeaks is a "baseless claim", concluding "Gingrich and others are talking about an unfounded conspiracy theory as if it's a matter of fact. It is far from it. We rate his claim Pants on Fire."[4]

In a separate analysis, PolitiFact.com concluded: "There's no evidence there's any link between Rich and WikiLeaks. The FBI has indirectly denied investigating the case, which Washington police consider a robbery gone wrong."[7]

Snopes.com looked into the matter and stated: "We were able to confirm the FBI is not investigating Rich's murder — it is an MPD investigation." Snopes contacted a spokesman for the Washington, D.C. mayor's office, who said, "All claims made by Mr. Wheeler are false and take fake news to a whole new level.

The family deserves better and everyday MPD continues to work diligently to solve this case."[8] Snopes rated the claim "DNC staffer Seth Rich sent 'thousands of leaked e-mails' to WikiLeaks before he was murdered" as "False".[8]

The fabrications were described as fake news and falsehoods by The New York Times.[9] The New York Times cited the conspiracy theories as an example of the persistence of false claims, concluding: "fake news dies hard".[9] The Los Angeles Times called the conspiracy theories "unsubstantiated rumors".[10]

The Washington Post cited the conspiracy theories as an example of the power of fake news to spread virally online.[11] The paper used the example as a case study of the persistence of fake news, and found that television news media can be a soft target for such false stories.[11]

The Washington Post further found that the proliferation of fake news via Facebook had decreased, but remained powerful on Twitter due to spread via online bots.[11] They found that the conspiracy theories with the largest potential to spread on the Internet were those that held attraction for both the alt-right movements and the political left wing.[11]

The Washington Post concluded that even if a particular false story had been sufficiently debunked, such fact-checking was unable to stop the spread of the falsehoods online.[11]

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