Joel and Mary Rich are speaking out after suing Fox News over the coverage of their son, the murdered DNC staffer, Seth Rich.
“I want the people who started the lies, who are responsible for the lies, held accountable. This has got to stop,” Mary Rich told Good Morning America on Thursday. “They never called us to check any facts. They took a rumor and ran with it.”
“We lost his body the first time and the second we lost his soul,” she added. “They took more from us with a lie.”
Rich, who was killed in July 2016 in Washington D.C. after what police say was a botched robbery, became a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists who said that he had been the source of DNC emails obtained and released by Wikileaks. If true, it would have destroyed the prevailing narrative that the emails were delivered to Wikileaks by way of Russian hackers.
Fox News and Sean Hannity dedicated significant coverage to the story — which ultimately turned out to be untrue.
The network issued a broad retraction of its Seth Rich coverage in May 2017.
“The fact that he worked for the DNC and the timing worked for those who had other motives,” said father Joel Rich.
“His computer didn’t have anything on it. He would never have done it,” Mary added.
On Tuesday, the Rich family filed suit against Fox News as well as reporter Malia Zimmerman and guest contributor Ed Butowsky.
“Joel and Mary Rich, grieving parents of a murdered child, seek justice for having become collateral damage in a political war to which they are innocent bystanders,” reads the suit. “Joel and Mary bring this case to hold Fox News, Fox reporter Zimmerman, and Fox News contributor and political operative Butowsky accountable. They seek to help prevent similar malicious and reckless conduct to protect future innocent victims from similarly becoming political fodder.”
Fox News has consistently declined to comment on the litigation, only telling TheWrap that Butowsky was not a “contributor” as labeled in the suit.
Rich’s parents told “Good Morning America” that they never received an apology from Fox over the false reporting.