Washington Times Withdraws False Article on Seth Rich, DNC Staff, Murdered | Media

A conservative newspaper that has repeatedly amplified Donald Trump's attacks on the media, while "false news" retracted an article about a murdered member of the Democratic Party and apologized to his family.

The Washington Times removed an opinion platform on the death of Seth Rich, after acknowledging that he contained statements "that we now believe to be false," linking the fatal shootout to the publication of hacked emails from Democratic Party.

The retraction was part of a legal agreement between the Times' brother and Rich's brother Aaron, who in March accused the paper of "total disregard for the truth."

Rich, a 27-year-old Democratic National Committee (DNC) worker, was shot dead in Washington in July 2016. Police said he was killed in a robbery. The right-wing conspiracy theorists claim without proof that he was murdered for disclosing e-mails.

The retracted article, by retired Admiral James Lyons, incorrectly stated that he was "well known in the intelligence community" that Rich and his brother were paid by WikiLeaks for DNC emails. the election of 2016.

"The Washington Times has no reason to believe that any part of this statement is true, and the Washington Times is retracting it in its entirety," the paper writes in its retraction.

US intelligence concluded that the e-mail accounts of several Democratic leaders had been hacked by Russian military intelligence agents before being leaked by WikiLeaks and a fake "DC Leaks" website.

The Washington Times has frequently republished Trump's attacks on mainstream media without noticing that they were unfounded or contested. In December 2017, he published another editorial entitled "Trump is right: false information is everywhere".

The newspaper said Monday that he was "retracting and renouncing" also his article that Rich's brother was avoiding investigators while he was cooperating with them. "The Washington Times apologizes to Mr. Rich and his family," he said.

The paper's decision followed the retraction of another article on Rich's death by Fox News, where his star presenter, Sean Hannity, enthusiastically pushed the conspiracy theory linking the murder to the electronic piracy of the DNC. A lawsuit filed against Fox News by Rich's family was dismissed by a judge.