The brother of slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich is hailing the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, saying he hopes the document will put an end to a conspiracy theory about Rich’s death.
“The special counsel has now provided hard facts that demonstrate this conspiracy is false,” Aaron Rich said in a statement obtained by The Hill on Friday.
Aaron Rich also called for political and media figures who propagated the unfounded conspiracy theory that his brother was killed because he was the source of stolen DNC emails published by WikiLeaks to “take responsibility.” {mosads}
“I hope that the people who pushed, fueled, spread, ran headlines, articles, interviews, talk and opinion shows, or in any way used my family’s tragedy to advance their political agendas—despite our pleas that what they were saying was not based on any facts—will take responsibility for the unimaginable pain they have caused us,” Aaron Rich said.{mosads}
Mueller’s report released Thursday debunks the conspiracy surrounding Seth Rich’s death in 2016.
The report says that Russia’s intelligence directorate, the GRU, was the source of stolen DNC emails and emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair John Podesta.
“It is clear that the stolen DNC and Podesta documents were transferred from the GRU to WikiLeaks,” the report said in a partially redacted sentence.
“The Office was able to identify when the GRU (operating through its personas Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks) transferred some of the stolen documents to WikiLeaks through online archives set up by the GRU,” it continued, detailing 2016 communications between the GRU and WikiLeaks.
The report also said that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange pushed conspiracies about Rich’s death to hide the true source of the emails.
Rich was shot to death while walking home in Washington, D.C., in 2016 in what authorities described as a robbery gone wrong.
Aaron Rich previously sued the The Washington Times over an editorial implying that his brother sent DNC emails to WikiLeaks.