Update, 8/26/19: It appears that Fox 5 has deleted its much-criticized story tying Seth Rich to Wikileaks.

https://twitter.com/jasonshevrin/status/1156194833691795456

As first noted by Jason Shevrin on Twitter, the story page now redirects to an error message. Unlike Fox News, the local station did not officially retract its story and has provided no explanation for taking it down. Fox 5 has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Even though the story is no longer available on the local station’s website, the conspiracy theory continues to spread. Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of President Donald Trump and former mayor of New York City, fanned the flames of the debunked Rich conspiracy on Twitter in late August.

Original: Yahoo reports that the conspiracy theories about the 2016 murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer in Bloomingdale originally came from a Russian intelligence agency.

Seth Rich was fatally shot while walking home in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016, in what D.C. police believe was a botched robbery. His murder remains unsolved.

Shortly after Rich was killed, Wikileaks began releasing hacked DNC emails, among other correspondences related to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Those emails came from Russian intelligence, according to the report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller and U.S. intelligence agencies.

But many online conspiracy theorists instead proposed, without evidence, that Rich was Wikileaks’ source. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange encouraged the rumors by implying that Rich provided him with the emails and offering a reward for information about his murder. Yahoo spoke with a U.S. federal prosecutor in charge of the Rich case, who said that Russia’s foreign intelligence service released a bulletin resembling an intelligence report that stated Rich was slain by a hit squad hired by Clinton while en route to tell the FBI about the presidential candidate’s corrupt practices.

The debunked conspiracy theory provided an alternate explanation for how Wikileaks acquired the emails without implicating Russia or adding to a narrative that the country worked to elect President Donald Trump. Rich’s family has said repeatedly that these claims are deeply painful to them as they continue to mourn their son and brother.

The first mainstream outlet to report these theories as plausible? None other than WTTG, the local Fox affiliate in D.C. The May 2017 report from Marina Marraco claimed there was “tangible evidence” that Rich was in communication with Wikileaks, citing a former D.C. police detective who claimed the department was assisting with a cover-up. (The Metropolitan Police Department denies these claims.)

The station’s story amplified the conspiracy theory. It quickly made its way to a slew of media outlets who reported the spurious claims as fact, including Fox News, where host Sean Hannity spent night after night discussing it.

But after publication, the story quickly fell apart. The key source, private investigator Rod Wheeler, recanted. (Wheeler is suing Fox, alleging that the channel fabricated his quotes and worked hand-in-hand with the White House to cook up the story.)

Fox News retracted its story about a week after publication. “The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting,” the parent network said in a statement. “Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed.”

But Fox 5 hasn’t done the same. Indeed, the story is still online, though it has an update from two days after publication that noted “Rod Wheeler has since backtracked.”

Fox 5 has not responded to a request for comment about the latest revelations from Yahoo about the genesis of the Rich conspiracy theory. During an interview last August with DCist about Fox 5 show Like It Or Not, which includes Marraco as a co-host, news director Paul McGonagle declined to comment on the story, or why it remained on the station’s website.

But a source within the Fox 5 newsroom, who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly about their workplace, says that many employees at the station were concerned at the time about how the station handled the story and remain embarrassed by it, especially with the renewed attention this week.

In October, the Washington Times retracted an op-ed about the Rich conspiracy “that we now believe to be false.” The newspaper was among the defendants in a lawsuit from the victim’s older brother, Aaron Rich.

“The last two years have brought unimaginable pain and grief to my family and me. I lost my only brother to a murder that to this date has not been solved, only to then have politically-motivated conspiracy theorists falsely accuse me of grotesque criminal acts,” Aaron Rich said in a statement at the time. “I am grateful that the Washington Times has acknowledged the indisputable truth that these allegations are, and always have been, false.”

Previously:
Mueller Report Further Refutes Conspiracies About Murdered DNC Staffer Seth Rich
Washington Times Retracts An Op-Ed Filled With Seth Rich Conspiracy Theories
Lawsuit: Fox News And GOP Supporter Cooked Up Bogus Seth Rich Story
Why The Hell Is Fox 5’s Bogus Seth Rich Story Still Online?
Fox 5 Continues Peddling Shameful Hearsay On Murder Of DNC Staffer
‘It’s Hurtful’: Seth Rich’s Family Responds To Latest Conspiracy Theory About His Murder