Some of Fox News’ biggest names will have to answer in court next month for their widely discredited reporting on the unsolved murder of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer whose July 2016 death was used to peddle right-wing conspiracy theories about Russian election interference. As the Daily Beast reported, Sean Hannity and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs are among the Fox staffers set to be deposed in late October, “part of an emotional distress and tortious interference lawsuit that Rich’s parents, Joel and Mary Rich, filed against Fox, Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman, and wealthy conservative and former Fox News guest Ed Butowsky.”
In May 2017, Zimmerman falsely claimed in a now-retracted FoxNews.com story that the slain DNC staffer was a secret source for WikiLeaks, responsible for leaking thousands of emails and suggested his murder—which police believe was part of a botched robbery—may have been part of a cover-up effort. “Conveniently, this conspiracy theory would mean that Rich, not Russian hackers, was behind the theft of the emails and their publication by WikiLeaks,” the Daily Beast notes. That version of events was quashed by both former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee. On air, Hannity amplified Zimmerman’s claim that the FBI found evidence of WikiLeaks ties on Rich’s computer, a story he continued to stand by even as it was taken down by Fox, declaring on his radio show, “I retracted nothing.” Hannity has not apologized; neither has Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who alleged that Rich was “assassinated” over his WikiLeaks ties during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “Gingrich is listed as a potential witness for deposition, although court documents don’t reveal whether his deposition has been scheduled,” reports the Daily Beast, which noted that Fox News did not comment for its article.
The lawsuits pose a larger question, one that Rolling Stone’s Andy Kroll raised last month in his extensive investigation into “how Fox News took a conspiracy theory from the online fringes and mainstreamed it into global news” and for which some of its biggest players “have so far escaped any accountability.” Meanwhile, the Rich family has endured three years of watching their private tragedy take “on a hideous new life of its own online, where no one’s grief is off limits and no amount of evidence can overcome the power of dogma and suspicion,” he wrote. The family’s fight, he added, “began in the court of public opinion but has moved to the court of law, a test of whether the victims of viral conspiracy theories and online disinformation can find justice in the social media era.”
It’s also a matter of closure, Kroll told CNN’s Brian Stelter, noting that Rich’s parents and brother “have tried to correct the record” and “asked people who have promoted this conspiracy theory to apologize, to retract it. And they haven’t made any headway when it comes to Fox. The last venue that they have to try to restore Seth’s reputation, to try to restore his memory, is to take these people to court,” Kroll said.
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