CONSPIRACY FILES: MURDER IN WASHINGTON

In July 2016 Seth Rich, a young staffer working for the Democrats, was shot dead in a Washington street at 4am. The police said it was a robbery but nothing was stolen – his watch, phone and wallet were found with him. The murder took place amid one of the ugliest and most vicious presidential campaigns in American history. Within weeks, allegations emerged that Seth Rich was behind the leak of thousands of damaging internal emails detailing the inner workings of the Democratic National Committee and Hilary Clinton’s campaign. Julian Assange went public to link Seth’s murder with the email leak, which had been published by his Wikileaks organisation.

Seth’s death quickly became the focus of multiple conspiracy theories that have gripped America. The stories have spread from the darkest corners of the web all the way to the White House. Despite repeated attempts to shut it down, the conspiracy continues to reverberate today, echoing so many crises of the Trump era: mistrust of the mainstream media, Russian interference in elections, collusion, the power of Facebook and the propagation and anatomy of so-called fake news

Who killed Seth Rich? The Democrats - in revenge for leaking? The Russians, who wanted to silence him because he uncovered their hacking of the DNC? Or was it just a bungled late night robbery?