Grieving Dad Says Seth Rich Scored Dream Job With Clinton Campaign Days Before Murder
Seth Rich Image by Facebook
By Ari Feldman August 18, 2016
Joel Rich, the father of slain Democratic staffer Seth Rich, has revealed that his son landed his dream job just days before being killed — a gig with the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
Rich told Britain’s Daily Mail that his son’s bosses at the Democratic National Committee selected him to work on the national campaign — the kind of gig Rich had been hoping to land since his college days.
“He’d worked on senate and house campaigns but he’d always wanted to work on a presidential campaign,” Joel Rich said. “He had just found out they wanted him and he was probably going to be moving up to Brooklyn through the election. He was really excited about that.”
Rich had wanted a career in politics since he was a young teen. The promising Jewish young man was remembered by many in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, as someone with a passion for American politics, and as a tireless worker for the expansion of voting rights.
Joel Rich also told the Daily Mail that from a tear in his son’s watch band and bruises found on the body it seemed clear to investigators that Rich fought for his life.
“We don’t know if there’s one person or two people – all we know is that there was a scuffle,” he said. “Seth’s watchband was torn, so somebody had tried to grab that.”
The Daily Mail also reported that, according to multiple witness accounts, Seth had been drinking heavily at his favorite Washington, D.C. bar late into the early morning of July 10. He was apparently struggling with issues in his relationship with his girlfriend, and was not his usual, friendly self.
“He would get into a conversation with guys who were sitting about sports, and even about politics, things like that,” the part-time manager of Lou’s City Bar said. “He was a friendly guy — a Midwestern kind of guy.”
That night, however, Rich appeared “sadder than usual.”
When the bar closed, Rich refused a ride home, saying he was going to a bar down the street that would be open for another hour. That was the last time anyone at the bar saw him.
When Rich was attacked outside his home in Washington, D.C.’s Bloomington neighborhood, he was talking on the phone with his girlfriend. Joel Rich said that his son often had to step outside his apartment to get good cell phone reception.
Joel Rich appealed once more for help from the community in helping find Seth’s killer — an appeal that both he and his wife have made in public multiple times since Rich’s death on July 10.
“We need more help – somebody was bruised, somebody’s clothes are torn,” he said. “Think about who that person is.”
Since the killing, Seth Rich has been at the center of several conspiracy theories, many of which suggest he was planning on revealing sensitive information to the FBI or was linked to the leaking of hacked DNC documents to WikiLeaks.
Police have called the murder an apparent botched robbery but the investigation has not produced any arrests.
Recently, both Newt Gingrich and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange have fanned the flames of the conspiracy theories by seeming to link the killing to the Wikileaks document dump.
Both Joel Rich and his wife Mary Ann have asked people to disregard these theories. They firmly believe, based on evidence gathered by the police, that Seth was the victim of a random robbery in a neighborhood where armed robberies have been on the rise.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
