Police believe Seth Rich was killed during a botched robbery in July 2016, but conspiracy theorists seized on the incident as something more sinister.

On May 16, 2017, Fox News published a story that claimed Rich was in contact with Wikileaks and leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee to the website.

In their lawsuit, Rich's parents say their son never leaked documents to Wikileaks. Fox News later retracted the story, saying it did not reach the outlet's ethical standards.