Fox paid seven figures to settle lawsuit over bogus Seth Rich conspiracy story

WASHINGTON — Just as star anchor Sean Hannity and other high-profile Fox News figures were due to be deposed about their promotion of a bogus conspiracy theory about the death of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, the cable network last month threw in the towel and moved to settle a lawsuit brought by Rich’s parents that threatened to expose a wealth of new details about one of its most embarrassing screw-ups in recent years.

The settlement between Fox News and Rich’s parents, Joel and Mary Rich, was publicly disclosed Tuesday, but with no details about the terms. But legal sources tell Yahoo News that the settlement includes a lucrative seven figure payment to the Rich family consistent with the size of payouts Fox News and related corporate entities have made in other cases that have brought them negative publicity.

The hastily arranged settlement also had the benefit of sparing Hannity and other Fox News figures — including network president Jay Wallace and contributor Newt Gingrich — the ordeal of being grilled under oath about claims in a series of broadcasts in May 2017 that blamed the leak of DNC emails to WikiLeaks on Rich. At the time, Hannity called a Fox News story attributing the DNC leak to Rich an “explosive” development that “might expose the single biggest fraud, lies, perpetrated on the American people by the media and the Democrats in our history.”

In fact, Fox News retracted the story after eight days and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation declared the claims about Rich were false, concluding — along with the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI — that it was Russian military intelligence agents who had hacked the DNC and passed the party’s emails to WikiLeaks through an online persona called Guccifer 2.0.

“The settlement with Fox News closes another chapter in our efforts to mourn the murder of our beloved Seth, whom we miss every single day,” Joel and Mary Rich said in a statement released Tuesday. “It allows us to move on from the litigation we initiated in response to Fox News’ May 2017 article and televised statements concerning Seth’s murder. We are pleased with the settlement of this matter and sincerely hope that the media will take genuine caution in the future.”

Fox News said in a statement: “We are pleased with the resolution of the claims and hope this enables Mr. and Mrs. Rich to find a small degree of peace and solace moving forward.” Asked for further comment, a spokeswoman responded that it was “not true” that Fox News initiated settlement talks to avoid the Hannity deposition, but declined further comment.

The story of Seth Rich, the subject of a Yahoo News six-episode “Conspiracyland” podcast series last year, grew out of the hotly contested 2016 presidential campaign, and became one of the leading conspiracy theories of Donald Trump’s presidency. Rich, a 27-year-old staffer for the DNC, was murdered while walking home from a bar early on the morning of July 13, 2016, in what Washington, D.C., police quickly concluded was most likely a botched street robbery.

But, as the “Conspiracyland” podcast revealed, shortly after Rich’s death, Russian intelligence agents and right-wing allies of Trump, including longtime political adviser Roger Stone, promoted the idea that Rich was assassinated by gunmen working for Hillary Clinton because of his supposed role in leaking the Democratic Party’s emails.

In fact, Rich had played no role in the leak of DNC emails. Deborah Sines, then the assistant U.S. attorney in Washington who was charged with investigating Rich’s murder, said in the podcast that the claims that Rich had done so were a “complete fabrication.”