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On 16 May 2017, Fox News published an explosive report linking the death of murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich to tens of thousands of e-mails allegedly found on his laptop computer. Fox reported that the e-mails were internal Democratic National Committee messages Rich transferred to Gavin McFayden, a now-deceased investigative journalist, who then sent them to the document-dumping web site WikiLeaks. The Fox report claimed that there was a conspiracy between the local police department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the D.C. mayor's office to cover up the investigation: Rich, a 27-year-old DNC staffer, was shot twice in the back at 4:20 in the morning on 10 July 2016 amid the run-up to the presidential election. Although none of his possessions were taken from him, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police consider it a botched robbery attempt, because there had been a spate of muggings in Rich's Bloomingdale neighborhood at the time. Almost two weeks later, on 22 July 2016, WikiLeaks dumped a load of hacked e-mails that would embarrass the DNC and create a media frenzy in the months before the election. The timing of the incidents, as well as Rich's employment at the DNC, led to conspiracy theories tying his death to the leak. Adding to the confusion, WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Rich's killer. Since his death, Rich's family has consistently denied rumors linking him to WikiLeaks. The Fox News story about Rich came one day after a report by the Washington Post accused President Donald Trump of spilling classified information to Russian envoys during their visit to the Oval Office on 10 May 2017. Brad Bauman, a spokesperson for Rich's family, told us he believed the Fox story was motivated by a desire to deflect attention away from the Post report: The Fox story uses two sources: Rod Wheeler, a Fox News contributor characterized as a private investigator in the article, and an unnamed federal investigator. On 15 May 2017, Wheeler speculated to local news outlet Fox5 that there was critical information on a computer that belonged to him, which was either in the possession of the FBI or MPD: Wheeler claimed to have a source at the FBI that confirmed Rich was linked to WikiLeaks, and a source inside the police department who told him MPD was told to stand down from the investigation. In a follow-up interview on Fox News, Wheeler implied that a conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of the city's government was at work: We were able to confirm the FBI is not investigating Rich's murder -- it is an MPD investigation. We reached out to Wheeler by e-mail and have yet to receive a response, but since the Fox story was published, he has been quoted in several news articles recanting his original story. He told BuzzFeed News the following day, That story on Fox 5 last night was inaccurate. I don't even know where the computers are. On 19 May 2017, the Rich family attorney sent Wheeler a cease and desist letter saying he had violated a contract forbidding him to publicly disclose information about the case and threatening to sue if he continues to do so. We contacted the office of Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to ask if there was a lurid connection between the mayor, the DNC, and Rich's death, and got a flat denial from spokesman Kevin Harris: We also asked the police department about Wheeler's claims that the department was stepping back from the investigation. A spokesperson for the department denied it and said that the investigation remains active: Bauman said in a statement that Wheeler was not authorized to speak on behalf of the family, and added the family only learned of the new round of accusations through news reports: McFayden, an investigative journalist who was an early defender of WikiLeaks, died in October 2016 after a battle with lung cancer. Although the Fox report claims Wheeler is a private investigator, a search for Wheeler's name on the public lookup tool for licenses in Washington D.C. yields no results. We also checked for a license under his name in Maryland, where his firm Capitol Investigations is based. This search also yielded no results. When we asked MPD whether he was indeed a homicide detective with the department, they only confirmed he once worked there starting in 1990. He was dismissed by the department in 1995, but a spokesman did not explain why. We sent an e-mail to Wheeler through his firm and have not yet received a response. NBC News identified the third party who hired Wheeler to investigate Rich's murder as Ed Butowsky, a Dallas-based financial adviser, who is also a Fox News contributor.
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