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Wikileaks is offering a $US20,000 reward to help find the killer of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who some conspiracy theorists claim was the source that tipped off Wikileaks and handed it thousands of DNC emails.
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Wikileaks announced through its Twitter account that it would give the money for information leading to a conviction of Seth Rich’s killer. Rich was shot in Washington, D.C. on July 10. The case is currently under investigation, yet no suspects have been named and it's thought to be related to an armed robbery.
U.S. authorities and experts previously said that they were very confident that the DNC email leak was due to hacking from Russian intelligence, but the Wikileak bounty has only helped to fuel rumors about Rich’s involvement in the leaks.
Rich’s family said that the support efforts to help find Rich’s killer were appreciated but that it was time to stop spreading the rumors. “I don’t want to play Wikileaks’ game,” said Father Joel Rich, who was also concerned that the reward would lead to more unsubstantiated claims and theories regarding Rich's deth.
Washington, D.C. police said they did not have any information to suggest that Rich had a relationship with Wikileaks.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently seeking asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, said in a statement that “we treat threats towards any suspected Wikileaks sources with extreme gravity.”
Assange, however, stopped short of revealing whether Rich was the source for the DNC email leak and claims that there is no proof that the leaked DNC material came from Russian intelligence.
The leak was publically damaging to the DNC, with committee chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz, CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall and Communications Director Luis Miranda all forced to step down from their positions following a number of scandalous revelations from the emails.
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