A Conspiracy of Dunces
Hillary Clinton’s enemies are using the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich to once again portray her as a murderous criminal
ITWASCLOSING time at Lou’s City Bar when Seth Rich drained the last of his Bell’s Two Hearted Ales and started walking home through a trendy neighborhood of northwest Washington, D.C. At 2:30 a.m. on July 10, the torrid heat that had gripped the city for weeks had eased slightly. Maybe it was the relative cool that prompted him to walk through several dark, dicey blocks to his apartment in Bloomingdale, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood a mile away. Or maybe he thought the walk would do him some good after venting to his longtime bartender about his unsuccessful efforts to reconcile his love life with his 12-hour days at the Democratic National Committee.
Whatever the reason, Rich, 27, a computervoting specialist at the DNC, would soon leave family and friends grieving. His decision to walk home would become part of a wild conspiracy theory that once again portrays Hillary Clinton and the Democrats as murderous criminals.
At 4:19 a.m., police patrolling nearby responded to the sound of gunfire and found Rich mortally wounded at a dark intersection a block and a half from a red-brick row house he shared with friends. He had multiple gunshot wounds in his back. About an hour and 40 minutes later, he died at a local hospital. Police have declined to say whether he was able to describe his assailants.
The cops suspected Rich was a victim of an attempted robbery. Strangely, however, they found his wallet, credit cards and cellphone on his body. The band of his wristwatch was torn but not broken. That was enough to fire up the right-wing Twitterverse with conspiracy theories claiming that Rich was murdered as he was on his way to sing to the FBI about internal DNC emails.
Such notions might have evaporated had not Julian Assange hurled a thunderbolt into the affair a few weeks later. The Wikileaks impresario, penned up in Ecuador’s London embassy as he dodges a rape allegation in Sweden, announced he was offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the Rich case. He hinted that the slain man had been a source in his organization’s recent publication of 30,000 internal DNC emails, which led to the firing of several top Democratic Party officials.
“What are you suggesting?” a startled interviewer from Dutch television asked him.
“I am suggesting,” Assange said, “that our sources, ah, take risks, and they, they become concerned to see things occurring like that.” His organization later “clarified” on Twitter that “this should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source for Wikileaks or to imply that his murder is connected to our publications.”
But Assange had already lit the fire. No matter that the Metropolitan Police Department issued a statement saying there was “no indication that Seth Rich’s death is connected to his employment at the DNC.” Police Chief Cathy Lanier, normally cautious, may have inadvertently
fueled the speculation during a crime-scene press conference on August 5, when she said, “Right now, we have more questions than answers.” No suspects have been arrested.
Mary and Joel Rich are distressed by the apparent political exploitation of their son’s death. Seth Rich had just accepted a promotion from the DNC to a position in Clinton’s campaign, they say. “It’s unfortunate and hurtful,” his parents say, in a statement to Newsweek, “that at the moment a murderer remains at large, there remains unfounded press speculation about the activities of our son that night. We should be focusing on the perpetrator at large.”
Residents of Bloomingdale, about 20 blocks north of D.C.’S Union Station, had long complained about crime. One resident tells Newsweek her house was burgled a few years ago while she and her husband were inside. Another resident complained on the neighborhood blog about “a small group of guys with a silver handgun terrorizing this neighborhood for weeks with minimal response from public officials.” Residents were particularly incensed about a deterioration in security over the past two years related to a massive water department tunnel project.
Meanwhile, sources involved with the DNC’S investigation of the hack rule out the notion that Seth Rich played any role in it. “There was no indication that any insider was involved in this,” says one source, demanding anonymity in exchange for discussing the investigation. “Every indication is this was a remote attack from a foreign government—the Russians. There is no indication that…there was any nefarious action taken by any employees in that environment.”
Nor is there any evidence Rich downloaded and printed out the DNC’S internal emails, the source says: “This is a very sophisticated actor. This is not some kid coming in and downloading documents and handing them to somebody.”
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the DNC hack. Assange has declined to discuss who gave him the material.
Assange has an agenda here, the source adds: to damage Hillary Clinton, which tracks with Moscow’s apparent desire to see Donald Trump elected. “This is a match made in heaven,” he says. “Assange has the vehicle to leak it, and the Russians have the vehicle by which to provide him with the data.”
Since Rich’s killing, the police presence in Bloomingdale has been beefed up, a local resident tells Newsweek. That is too late for Rich, and for his family, his colleagues and his friends, who gathered August 3 at Lou’s City Bar to honor his memory. “His parents were here,” Joe Capone, the general manager, said at Lou’s. “People got up and said some words about Seth and what a great guy he was and how they missed him.”
Capone pointed to Rich’s usual seat at the corner of the bar. “He was a great guy,” he said. “Just a couple-of-beers kind of guy.” One news account describing Rich as despondent and drunk the night he was killed, penned by a journalist in the conservative London Daily Mail, missed the mark, he said. “That was just not Seth. I never saw him drunk or even tipsy.”
ASSANGE HAS AN AGENDA: TO DAMAGE HILLARY CLINTON, WHICH TRACKS WITH MOSCOW’S APPARENT DESIRE TO SEE DONALD TRUMP ELECTED.