USADaily -
There was a time when I was of two minds about Wikileaks. No more. If you thought Julian Assange and Wikileaks had yet to jump the shark, that’s going to change right now.
Assange and Wikileaks are now floating the theory that Hillary Clinton was involved in the recent murder of Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee staffer in Washington, DC.
It started with Wikileaks, oddly, offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of anyone involved in the young man’s murder. And now it’s turned into a full-blown Wikileaks-fed conspiracy, involving Hillary Clinton.
Assange admitted recently that he’d like Hillary to lose the election, and that he was taking actions to help make that happen. Assange was speaking in the context of the DNC emails that the Russians stole, and which were subsequently published by Wikileaks.
And now we have a b-rated full-blown whodunit, courtesy of Wikileaks.
Assange recently gave an interview to a Dutch TV program, in which he implied that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks information, and that perhaps that’s why he was killed.
Slate put two and two together:
Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organization appear to be actively encouraging a conspiracy theory that a Democratic National Committee staffer was murdered for nefarious political purposes, perhaps by Hillary Clinton.
Seth Rich was killed last month in Washington, D.C., in an early morning shooting that police have speculated was a failed robbery. Because Rich did voter outreach for the DNC and because we live in a ridiculous world, conspiracy theorists have glommed on to a fantastical story that Rich was an FBI informant meeting with purported agents who were actually a hit team sent by Hillary Clinton. There is of course absolutely zero evidence for this and Snopes has issued a comprehensive debunking of the premise itself (Rich is only 27 and has only worked at the DNC since 2014 so is unlikely to be in possession of information that might take down Clinton, he was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time of the shooting and she hasn’t reported any FBI meeting, there have been a string of robberies in the area, an FBI rendezvous at 4 a.m. only happens in movies, the whole thing is batshit crazy, etc.).
As Slate notes, the conspiracy theory was already debunked by Snopes, the lead Internet-conspiracy-theory debunking Web site:
While it’s true police maintain an open investigation into Seth Rich’s death, the claim connecting him to Hillary Clinton was the third of its sort to emerge from the same conspiracy-monger in mid-2016. All those rumors were variations on the long-circulating (and false) “body bags” claims that the Clintons habitually do away with once-loyal associates turned political liabilities. Prior to publishing the trio of Clinton-related fabrications, the same site and blogger held that President Obama had ordered the military to nuke the city of Charleston (which didn’t happen), that Rear Admiral Rick Williams was fired because he revealed Obama’s purchase of a mansion in Dubai (Williams was actually terminated for misconduct), and that Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama were enmeshed in a potentially conflict-starting dispute over the practices of the Monsanto agribusiness corporation.
But the fact that it came from crazy-ville didn’t stop Wikileaks from embracing it.
Seriously, Wikileaks, you’re pathetic.
Follow me on Twitter: @aravosis — Win a pony! (not really)
Source
