Gingrich’s attempt to implicate Democrats unfounded

Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich “apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning, having given WikiLeaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments . ... It turns out, it wasn’t the Russians.” — Newt Gingrich on May 21on an episode of “Fox and Friends”

An unfounded conspiracy theory persists that WikiLeaks got the stolen emails from a Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot and killed in July 2016.

Seth Rich, who worked on voter access projects for the DNC, was killed early in the morning near his Washington home. Ten months later, the case remains unsolved. Washington police have said they believe it was likely a botched robbery.

On May 15, private investigator Rod Wheeler said he had evidence to prove the theorists right. But Wheeler backtracked on his claims the next day, and the Rich family has sent him a cease-and-desist letter, saying their son was not WikiLeaks’ source.

Two days after Gingrich made this claim, Fox News retracted its report promoting this conspiracy theory.

Wheeler told CNN that he hadn’t seen the evidence himself, and his knowledge of Rich’s alleged email contact with WikiLeaks came from the national Fox News reporter, not his own investigative work. Fox retracted its own May 16 article, saying “the article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.”

The intelligence community and private cybersecurity professionals have widely concluded that the DNC hack and WikiLeaks dump are covered with Russian fingerprints.

Our ruling

There is no trustworthy evidence that Rich was WikiLeaks’ source for thousands of DNC emails. The police believe his death was the result of a botched robbery. The intelligence community and cybersecurity experts have reached a broad conclusion that all the available evidence points to Russia as the actual perpetrators.

Gingrich and others are talking about an unfounded conspiracy theory as if it’s fact. It is far from it. We rate his claim Pants on Fire.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has suggested that Democratic National Committee member Seth Rich was “assassinated at 4 in the morning” after giving WikiLeaks a trove of DNC emails, a claim that has been debunked.