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Is Seth Rich Alive?

The America First Media Investigation into the Murder of Seth Rich

By Hannibal MootPublished 7 years ago 8 min read
Top Story - September 2017
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The America First Media Investigation Into the Murder of Seth Rich

Saturday, September 9, 2017

This question pops up, day after day, regardless of the circumstantial evidence we put forward—is Seth Rich still alive?

We aren't investigating leads into the narrative of his murder because we believe there's the slightest chance he's alive, hiding out somewhere, but certain conspiracy theorists propagate the possibility based on one factor: lack of physical evidence.

I have attempted to address the differences between circumstantial and physical proof in numerous tweets—admittedly, difficult to do throughly in 140 characters or less.

There is a long standing and incorrect belief that circumstantial evidence is somehow of lesser importance or value than physical, hard evidence. In most cases, the opposite is true.

A gun would be considered hard or physical evidence, yet if your suspect was in Europe at the established time of the crime, the circumstances would negate the physical evidence. Quite easily, I would add.

It would not matter how much physical evidence one collected pointed to a particular suspect if the circumstances dictated the suspect, for whatever reasons, could not have performed the act.

The circumstantial evidence will trump the physical evidence—every time. It has to.

Lack of hard evidence does not prove anything. All it means is there is lack of hard evidence—extremely common in many criminal cases, including murder.

So common is the lack of physical evidence in criminal cases, circumstantial evidence dictates the verdict in more trials than one might think.

Let’s say your house was broken into. The burglars stole a handgun and fled in the white Ford truck you had parked in the driveway.

After a couple of hours of joyriding in your truck, they stop at a convenience store, shoot and kill the clerk, rob the cash register, and are seen by witnesses driving away in your white truck.

Do you see where I am going with this? The police are able to trace the abandoned truck to you. They recover the weapon in a garbage bin and match the ballistics to your gun.

The eyewitnesses, and even the store’s security camera, clearly identify your truck leaving the scene. Eyewitnesses might even pick your photograph out of an array of pictures because your hairstyle resembled the criminal’s hair, and this feature happened to be what stood out in their recollection.

The unreliability of eyewitness memory could be an article in itself. Many innocent people have gone to prison, wrongly convicted by eyewitness testimony—not through intentional error on the part of the witness, but due to the physiological reactions of the brain and its memory functions in stressful situations.

If you are the victim of the robbery you better hope the circumstantial evidence— the circumstances—make it impossible for you to have been the murderer or you are going to prison based solely on the physical, or, hard, evidence.

Let’s say you happened to be three states over visiting relatives at the same time your house was broken into and the clerk was murdered. Your relatives can attest to your being at their house. Maybe there were tolls with cameras showing you driving your car at the time of the break in. There is a gas station clerk who remembers you stopping for fuel during the time of the crimes.

You have fortunately been exonerated by circumstantial evidence. You should be thankful circumstances outweigh the physical proof in this hypothetical situation. If the law treated an abundance of physical proof as more substantial than the few circumstances making it impossible for you to have committed the crime, you would be going to prison an innocent victim.

In the Seth Rich investigation, the people refusing to weigh the circumstantial evidence properly are basing their theory of his being alive not on an abundance of physical proof, but a lack of physical proof.

Nobody I have heard perpetuating the theory Seth is still alive has ever offered any circumstantial evidence to back their claim, or to challenge our findings—lack of hard proof is their only claim.

I could literally write out 100 claims with no physical proof and claim I am correct if I ignore circumstantial evidence. It’s similar to defending a negative.

I have no proof you cheated on the exam therefore you must have cheated on the exam.

Let’s look at some of the circumstantial evidence available which supports Seth’s being deceased…

Regardless of the inconsistencies and irregularities from the police, the Metropolitan Police Department would have to been involved in a fake crime involving someone nobody knew anything about from the very beginning as they issued the notice of the shooting on the morning of July 10th, 2016.

Why would they do this?

More difficult would be keeping any police officers involved silent to this day. Hypothetically speaking, a plot to cover up a murder would actually keep the participants silent due to the legal repercussions of being involved.

On the other hand, the temptation to leak information of the victim being alive would be ever-present, especially with the public interest the case has since drawn. The motivations to let this information leak are too numerous to list—the money some publications would pay for an anonymous tip to Seth’s whereabouts, a disgruntled officer, the spouse, or better yet, the ex-spouse of an officer.

After the police department would come the paramedics and the hospital staff at MedStar (depending on your theory of how the ruse began) because we know these people were involved with treating Seth.

The “alive” theory would have to begin one of two ways: the shooting itself was staged and he was never shot at all, or, the shooting took place but Seth survived and was somehow whisked off to your country of choice.

A lot of people would be performing one of these two events at somebody’s request. Who would be the person or persons to order such an intensive and expensive operation to be carried out on someone the public would have no interest in at the time? And why?

It is here where I find it difficult to continue as devil’s advocate since I cannot imagine any possible motive for anybody to have ordered this type of operation. It wouldn’t make any sense to fake the death of an unknown employee of the DNC at this time.

Who would gain?

Setting the motive aside for now, let’s continue on to the family. Again, there are only two scenarios available if you are sticking with the “alive” theory: the family either knew about the plan and have been playing along this past year, or, the family has also been deceived and are under the belief their son is dead.

If they are playing along, nothing is different from how it is now. All of their actions would be the same regardless.

If the family is hypothetically involved in the staged death scenario, you have to decide on their motives for staying silent about his being alive, while taking into consideration the fact they did go through the entire funeral, media interviews, and so on.

The people I have spoken to who believe Seth may still be alive point to the family’s behavior as the aspect they believe to be the most compelling evidence—next to the lack of physical evidence, of course.

Admittedly, the reactions of some of the family members might not be considered normal in a few of the interviews, but this could also be explained by our working theory of the family knowing the murderer.

There is no avoiding the motive at this point. If the family is covering for the fact Seth is still alive, who is benefitting? There is only one answer: Seth himself.

An operation of this sort offers no protection to the family, in fact, if they are aware Seth is still alive in this scenario, they are a liability, and thus, in danger.

The family would be acting in order to protect Seth’s cover where ever he was living. Nobody else benefits.

The only people with the authority to have sanctioned such a massive undertaking would have been someone in the government. What possible scenario is there which benefits anyone in either the former or current administration, to have Seth alive and safe in another country?

crickets

I’ll give you a hint, there is no answer which makes any sense, at least none I have heard so far.

To summarize, if you are a believer in the conspiracy (yes, this would be a literal conspiracy theory) you have to believe someone in either the government or FBI authorized the use of manpower and a substantial amount of money and time for the foreseeable future, to protect someone who was unknown to the general population.

It’s simply not acceptable to put forth the theory Seth Rich must be alive because you have not seen physical evidence to the contrary.

You have to be able to establish a somewhat plausible scenario to go with your assertion, at the very least.

Since our group, America First Media, is able to more than substantiate the fact Seth Rich is deceased based on circumstantial evidence of our own, your burden of proof is even greater.

Of course, I am not addressing the average person with an opinion, I am referring to actual journalists or researchers who make the claim Seth is still alive in the public arena without addressing the points I've mentioned.

Our investigation into the murder of Seth Rich has progressed far beyond the point of establishing whether he is in fact deceased. It is not only a distraction but a hindrance to the investigation to continually be asked to return to the very first hurdle we were easily able to overcome months ago without needing any physical proof.

I have said many times, it's much easier for us to establish Seth is deceased with circumstantial evidence than it would be for anyone to prove he is still alive by the same means.

A lack of physical proof is not proof of anything, contrary to what some investigators seem to believe.

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About the Creator

Hannibal Moot

Writer, researcher, and investigator with America First Media, and founder of BullTruth News on Medium(banned), The BullTruth Daily News.

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