The conspiracy theories are largely based on the fact that Rich was killed shortly before hacked emails were released, showing DNC officials worked closely with the Clinton campaign during her primary race against Bernie Sanders.
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Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over allegations of rape stemming from a work visit he made to the country in 2010 when WikiLeaks was attracting worldwide attention for a trove of documents leaked by US Army Private Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley).
Last month the organization published thousands of internal DNC emails that embarrassed committee officials and forced Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz out of her post.
The interviewer from Nieuwsuur asked Mr Assange if that was not simply a murder.
A UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on February 5 ruled in a non-binding decision that Assange’s confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention by Sweden and Britain. “As a 27-year-old, who works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington”, Assange said in the interview.
“WikiLeaks never sits on material”, Assange said during a recent interview on Dutch television.
While Assange would not confirm whether Rich was a Wikileaks source, he did hint there was more to his murder than an ordinary robbery.
Despite the speculation, those close to the murder of Seth Rich believe the story from police that he was killed in a robbery gone wrong. “It’s quite something to suggest a murder”. FBI Director James B Comey later issued a statement saying, “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues meant to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”.
“That said, some are attempting to politicize this disgusting tragedy, and in their attempts to do so, are actually causing more harm that good and impeding on the ability for law enforcement to properly do their job”.
A spokesman for the Rich family told Business Insider on Wednesday that they welcomed all efforts to find Rich’s killer, but pleaded to keep his name out of conspiracy theorizing.
Assistant D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said that “at this time we don’t have any information to suggest” a connection between Rich’s killing and the WikiLeaks data or other theories raised online.
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“We hope our efforts will contribute to the family’s calls for information and to the separate reward issued by police”.
