Old misinformation about Democratic party staffer Seth Rich gains new traction online

A "breaking news" label generally connotes something happening at that moment — not an event from five years ago. 

But a recent Facebook post mischaracterizes an old web video just so. 

"BREAKING DEAD DNC Leaker Has Just Been Identified – Trump Was RIGHT!" the June 16 post says. 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The video in the post was published March 2018 on YouTube, and the revelation of a supposed "DNC leaker’s" identity predates even that. The video’s host discusses the death of Seth Rich, a Democratic party worker who was shot and killed near his home in Washington not long before the first WikiLeaks dump of Democratic emails in July 2016. 

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Threads posts

stated on October 26, 2024 in a Threads post

Four Florida counties had “zero results” Oct. 26, and “something underhanded might be happening.”

The proximity of that dump and Rich’s death spurred rumors that Rich was the true source of Democratic National Committee files that WikiLeaks shared that year. At one point, Fox News aired and then retracted a report saying the FBI had proof Rich was WikiLeaks’ source.

PolitiFact has dug into and debunked multiple claims that Rich was murdered because he gave former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails to WikiLeaks. And as we’ve previously reported, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report in 2019 made clear that Rich wasn’t the source. Rather, the report concluded that Russia hacked the Democratic party’s servers and passed that material to WikiLeaks.

The case of Rich, who was shot in the back and killed, is unsolved, but police have said they believe he died in an attempted robbery. 

We rate claims that Rich’s identity is now breaking news False.