the seth rich conspiracy theory and it slandered the name of a man who had been murdered, but it started in the bowels of the internet and worked its way up to the high-profile outlets and to the white house itself. let s start with the seth rich issue, jay, and the timeline here. is it possible that this whole russia narrative was and the leaks really came from a dnc staffer and that the media s been wrong for almost a year? well, sean, the media has not been right yet. the 27-year-old works for the dnc. he was shot in the back, murdered just two weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in washington. what are you suggesting? i m suggesting that our sources take risks. we re just two months shy of the one-year anniversary of seth rich s murder and ever since we learned rich was a dnc staffer, the conspiracy theories online have taken a life of their own, but today fox 5 as learned
is it possible that this whole russia narrative was and the leaks really came from a dnc staffer and that the media s been wrong for almost a year? well, sean, the media has not been right yet. the 27-year-old works for the dnc. he was shot in the back, murdered just two weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in washington. what are you suggesting? i m suggesting that our sources take risks. we re just two months shy of the one-year anniversary of seth rich s murder and ever since we learned rich was a dnc staffer, the conspiracy theories online have taken a life of their own, but today fox 5 as learned there is new information that proves these theorists are, in fact, right. we have this very strange story now of this young man who worked for the democratic national committee who apparently was assassinated at 4:00 in the morning having given wikileaks something like 23,000 i m sorry, 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. nobody s investigati
you guys know what this represents? i don t know maybe it s the calm before the storm. reporter: weeks later someone calling themselves q began to post cryptic messages in an online thread called calm before the storm. q claimed to be a high-level government insider. followers believe q even flew on air force one. at one point qanon had falsely suggested certain hollywood celebrities were pedophiles, posting video of the alleged victims on youtube. another theory that gained steam, lies about slain dnc staffer seth rich. explosive developments in the mysterious murder of former dnc staffer seth rich. reporter: one of the theories posted read q bombshell. debbie wasserman schultz ordered seth rich s murder. and suggested someone has put together some very significant qanon bread crumbs and baked a bombshell loaf of bread. police say it was a botched
reporter: one of the theories posted read q bombshell. debbie wasserman schultz ordered seth rich s murder. and suggested someone has put together some very significant qanon bread crumbs and baked a bombshell loaf of bread. police say it was a botched robbery. wasserman schultz called the rumors vial. more recently qanon evangelists started bombarding a reporter for the conservative website the daily caller insisting he ask about qanon at the white house briefing. he refused to do it. i have people commenting on my personal instagram photos saying i m a coward who needs to do my damn job and ask about q. so yeah, it was like a nonstop of three, four days of online harassment. reporter: while it s unclear how many people believe these lies, awareness of qanon really began to mushroom after the so-called pizzagate conspiracy. a wild theory that falsely connected high-ranking
question in the segment, seth rich s parents say fox has never apologized to them. fox pushed that story for a week across its network, they had the story up, the conspiracy theory story on their website, they did retract it after six days but rich s parents said they never received an apology and they are now suing fox news over the story. let s move to the trial of the president s former campaign chair. it got off to a swift start with jury selection, cross-examination of the first witness in day one. joining outside alexandria, virginia, nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken delanie. you were inside the courtroom yesterday. what did you learn? good morning, willie. i learned that the prosecution painted an astonishing portrait of greed and deceit. they allege that paul manafort committed this massive fraud. we ve seen this in documents, but it s another thing all together to see a member of robert mueller s team articulate this before the jury.