Court OKs suit by parents of Seth Rich against Fox News

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Mary and Joel Rich hold a photo of their son Seth. (Photo by Matt Miller for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

On Friday, a federal appeals court resurrected a lawsuit against Fox News by the parents of Seth Rich over the network’s reporting on the former DNC employee’s murder. The unsolved crime has been the subject of conspiracy theories claiming he had leaked Democrat party emails to Wikileaks before his death.

Reversing a 2018 lower court dismissal of the lawsuit, the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals three-judge panel in Manhattan unanimously decided that a Fox News story was “false” and “unsubstantiated” and as such, the network was part of a an alleged “campaign of emotional torture” for Rich’s parents.

“We would not wish what we have experienced upon any other parent — anywhere,” Joel and Mary Rich said in a statement. “We appreciate the appellate court’s ruling and look forward to continuing to pursue justice.”

According to a Bloomberg report, the Riches claim that the purpose of the story about Seth Rich’s mysterious murder “was to take the heat off the Trump administration as investigators probed whether Russian-backed hackers had leaked the emails to advance Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy.”

The suit alleges that a May 16, 2017 story authored by Fox News staffer Malia Zimmerman was an unsubstantiated suggestion that Rich’s death was a political assassination.

A week after the story ran, Fox News issued a retraction, indicating that it fell short of its standards. However, the appeals court judges pointed out that some leading conservatives and on-air guests discussed it for several months afterward.

“The court’s ruling today permits Mr. and Mrs. Rich to proceed with discovery to determine whether there is a factual basis for their claims against FOX News,” a Fox News statement read. “And while we extend the Rich family our deepest condolences for their loss, we believe that discovery will demonstrate that FOX News did not engage in conduct that will support the Riches’ claims. We will be evaluating our next legal steps.”

Rich, a 27-year-old employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was killed early on the morning of July 10, 2016, while walking home to his house 30 blocks north of the Capitol. Washington, D.C. police concluded it was a botched robbery, although the police investigation into his death remains open. His killers have never been caught.

The Fox News story launched a myriad of conspiracy theories about the murder, including that it was committed by assassins doing the bidding of Hillary Clinton as the result of documents being disclosed to Wikileaks.

A July Yahoo News investigation presented in a podcast series entitled “Conspiracyland” reported that Russian intelligence agents planted a fake report that Clinton was involved in the murder. According to Yahoo: “no evidence ever surfaced of any connection between Rich and WikiLeaks, and in the ‘Conspiracyland’ podcast, Deborah Sines, the former assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the investigation into Rich’s death, said on tape that the Fox News story was a ‘complete fabrication.'”

“You’re used, you’re lied to, you’re a pawn in your own son’s death,” said Mary Rich in an interview for the “Conspiracyland” podcast. “I wish they had the chance to experience the hell we have gone through. Because this is worse than losing my son the first time. This is like losing him all over again.”

Writing for the three-member appeals court panel, U.S. Judge Guido Calabresi called the Fox News story a “false” and “unsubstantiated” report that was contradicted by “official U.S. intelligence reports” and was retracted by the network eight days after it was published. Calabresi noted that, even after the retraction, network guests continued to reference the article and the network continued to make two videos available online that referred to its contents.

Calabresi wrote that the allegations brought by the Riches in their lawsuit against Fox News and two co-defendants, Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky, who was reportedly involved in the preparation of the story, met the standard of “outrageous conduct” that should allow the Riches’ lawsuit to proceed.

“We have no trouble concluding that — taking their allegations as true — the Riches plausibly alleged what amounted to a campaign of emotional torture,” Cabresi wrote.

 

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