Why is Seth Rich’s Family Suing Fox News?
Update: Seth Rich’s brother Aaron Rich filed suit Tuesday against Ed Butowsky, citizen journalist Matt Crouch, America First Media and The Washington Times for acting with “reckless disregard for the truth.” According to CNN, Rich alleges the outlets peddled a false and unfounded claim he was involved with his brother in leaking DNC emails to WikiLeaks.
Earlier this month, the family of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich sued Fox News, reporter Malia Zimmerman and billionaire Ed Butowsky. The family claims “intentional infliction of emotional distress” caused by Fox News airing a story in May 2017 suggesting Rich may have leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks, and this may have gotten him killed. Butowsky funded a private investigator for the family and continues to press the Seth-Rich-as-DNC-leaker theory.
He also recently claimed Rich’s father told him that Rich (and brother Aaron) did have contact with WikiLeaks. Through their lawyers, the family denies the claim.
If Butowsky is lying, he should ‘fess up and pay up. Shame, shame. If Fox News truly misrepresented itself, aired what knew they was a false story out of malice, politics or click bait, then sure. The Murdock family should hand over the keys to Fox News to the Rich family.
And never must we stop praying for justice for Seth Rich and God’s peace on the Rich family.
However, I confess, this suit has me stumped.
Why Sue Now?
It’s been a year since the story aired. Why sue now? Why in the world would you sue a billionaire who can afford to fight back and a news organization that can’t afford not to? Especially when you have very little chance of winning?
The lawsuit accuses Fox News of “inventing” the “sham” story, and subsequently causing emotional distress by airing the story. This not only puts Fox News’ credibility on the line, it also opens the door to future suits by anyone emotionally upset by a story affecting them. You’d think this case would make CNN and MSNBC very nervous — given their run of fake stories, let alone the nature of the business. Instead, they were jubilant.
The suit argues that Fox News portrays Rich as a “traitor and a criminal.” That’s not true. He was portrayed as a whistleblower. And Sean Hannity — mentioned in the suit, but not a party to the suit — repeatedly portrayed Rich as a hero, a patriot. Almost anyone questioning the official story does this. Do a Twitter search on “Seth Rich” and see how often he’s pictured dressed in the American flag.
The suit says Butowsky, and investigator/Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler, et. al., misrepresented themselves. (The trouble started when Wheeler and Butowksy started questioning the police theory of a botched robbery. Wheeler also talked publicly about the case, which the family didn’t want him to do.)
Still, legal experts tell The Washington Post the chances of success are dubious at best. The family must prove Fox News’ behavior was “outrageous” in the legal sense. That’s a nearly impossible bar to reach. Even the liberal-leaning Columbia Journalism Review says winning an emotional distress case against a media outlet is a long shot.
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This leaves me with two worries: First, if this goes to court, the family will only suffer more stress and anguish. Second, their spokesman and the media continually call this a right-wing conspiracy.
Something isn’t adding up.
Who Isn’t Getting Sued?
The notion that Fox News invented the Seth Rich is the DNC leaker theory is nonsense. This alone should get the suit tossed. Look who else is talking about it and not getting sued.
It was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who strongly insinuated Rich was the leaker. He even put up a reward for the capture of Rich’s killer. This happened nearly a year before the Fox News story. He continues to insist the DNC emails came to him from inside the organization, not from a Russian hack. Yet Assange is not named in the suit.
In fact, several sources publicly claiming that Rich was involved aren’t named in the suit. Former British ambassador and WikiLeaks operative Craig Murray publicly stated the leak was an inside job and the emails were handed to him in a DC park. He said this months before the Fox News story. He’s not listed.
Notorious file-sharing guru Kim DotCom, who is connected to WikiLeaks, said he “knew” Rich was behind the DNC leak because he helped connect him to WikiLeaks. In fact, to this day, he says he can give Robert Mueller information proving what he’s saying, but Mueller is not interested. DotCom is not listed.
Fox News hasn’t mentioned the case since pulling the story. However, One American News has. They are not being sued.
Much of the energy in keeping the Seth Rich case alive comes from Bernie Sanders supporters. They even have a lawsuit going against the DNC, where Rich was scheduled to be a witness. They’re not listed.
Another loud voice has been DC lobbyist Jack Burkman. He wasn’t sued. Former DNC chair Donna Brazile said in her book her first reaction to Rich’s murder was to connect it to his work. She closed her curtains out of fear she’d be next. Yet, she is not sued.
The Democrats
In a statement, Rich’s parents said, “The pain and anguish that comes from seeing your murdered son’s life and legacy treated as a mere political football is beyond comprehension.”
The suit depends heavily on allegations in a discrimination lawsuit filed against Fox News by contributor and investigator Rod Wheeler. Wheeler claims the White House was heavily involved in the Fox News story. The White House laughed off the allegation. Wheeler himself contradicted some of his other claims in interviews. Even conceding the White House had a heads up on the story, there’s still a problem with the family suing Fox News complaining about politization.
Who’s actually politicizing the case? The media covering it or the Democratic Party? The DNC reportedly supplied family spokesman Brad Bauman. (He vehemently denies being “paid” by the DNC, but not being sent by them.) DC is crawling with PR people. Yet they sent a known Democrat crisis fixer. In other words, this is not someone whose skill is helping people not used to the limelight. It’s helping make Democratic problems go away.
Bauman wouldn’t say who was paying him. However, we know from Donna Brazile that the Hillary Clinton campaign made all DNC decisions at that time. We also know — and this first drew my attention to the Seth Rich case — there was a sudden appearance of a series of coordinated articles in liberal outlets blasting anyone daring to even raise questions about the case. This was only amplified in the days following the Fox News story, as I wrote at the time. Those articles also contained a very clear set of five talking points.
- It’s just a right-wing conspiracy theory. (Despite the widespread political views of those looking into the case, and folks like Assange igniting the case and Brazile herself raising questions.)
- Leave it to the police to investigate. (Despite the police having no new leads since December of 2016, the botched robbery theory not going anywhere, and $500K in reward money not shaking any street thugs loose.)
- The stories cause the family anguish. (True enough. Though keeping the unsolved case in the public eye would increase the chances of new evidence coming to light.)
- There’s nothing to see here. It’s all been disproven. (A flat-out lie. Or at the most generous, until you have suspects arrested and convicted, all options have to remain on the table.)
- If you raise questions you are a horrible, hateful person. (If slander is your argument, you’ve lost the argument.)
The lockstep lack of curiosity, outright hostility and messaging choreography raises a huge red flag.
Further, as The Stream’s Rachel Alexander can attest, any mention of Seth Rich brings an immediate onslaught of Media Matters trolls flooding the comment section. Media Matters is a outfit co-founded by Clinton campaign manager John Podesta — the same guy who said he wanted to make an example of whoever leaked the emails “whether or not we have any real basis for it.”
In fact, the minute word of the Fox News suit came out, a massive wave of anti-Fox News tweets hit. They share much of the same wording, and certainly the same message.
In sum, where is the politicization? From the broad, bipartisan range of people seeking answers or the Democratic operatives attempting to silence those asking questions?
Further Anguish?
Something else about the suit bothers me: If the original story from Fox News caused so much anguish, what happens when there’s a trial? What happens when Fox News starts to make the case that they had good reason to believe their reporting is true? Whether it is true or not is irrelevant to the suit. Fox News just has to show its intentions were just. The family wants to avoid emotional distress. The suit just begs for more of it.
The plaintiff’s case would be sympathetic, but the defense would be raise to a fever pitch questions about the case. Take a simple example: Donna Brazile’s instinct was to connect Rich’s murder to his job. How can Fox News be called an “outrageous” bad actor for thinking like the head of the Democratic National Committee? How could it be wrong to investigate whether Rich’s work led to his death, when even she thought so?
The practical question settles largely on how the emails got to WikiLeaks. Either an insider leaked them or an outsider hacked them. Now that they’re being sued over it, Fox News has every right to subpoena the DNC and get at any technical data and communications from CrowdStrike. They have every right to find out who was funding the family spokesman, and dig out details of the efforts to silence anyone asking questions.
Besides the new emotional distress, the case would be a political nightmare for the Democrats now supporting the family. The defendents have every right to discover just what the DC police were up to with the investigation. Was there political pressure put on detectives, as Wheeler claimed? Did the FBI examine Rich’s computer? Did they, in fact, find anything?
What happens when to defend themselves Fox News and Bukowsky really go down the rabbit hole? The suit and its supporters argue that Fox News coordinated with the White House to push the Seth Rich story to deflect attention from the Trump Russia collusion investigation. As we now know, the Trump Russia collusion story was a fiction created by the Hillary campaign and paid for via the law firm of Perkins Coie. Why’s that important? When the DNC finally investigated the loss of the emails, they refused to let the FBI investigate their computers. They refused to let Homeland Security examine them either. Instead, a liberal tech firm was brought it called CrowdStrike. Who brought them in? Not Donna Brazile or any other DNC official. It was Perkins Coie.
In other words, Fox News can argue that rather than creating the Seth Rich story to distract from Trump Russia Collusion, the Russian involvement in the DNC hack was created to deflect attention from the scandalous doings at the DNC.
All’s Fair
All is fair in court and war. If Fox News fights this case, the fight will be loud, ugly and potentially very disturbing.
My prediction: This never goes to trial. The suit will quietly be dismissed or dropped. And the media will continue to loudly decry Fox News and right-wing conspiracy theories.
My prayer: Be it a professional hit or thugs out for kicks, the killers will soon be found.
