Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested there might be some truth to the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of 27-year old former DNC staffer Seth Rich.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange made waves earlier this week by floating the possibility that Rich had been one of his confidential sources, and that his murder was related to Wikileaks’ release of thousands of emails containing information politically damaging to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Speaking on the Mike Gallagher Show on Wednesday, Gingrich said: “You begin to realize that there are dangerous things going on in the world.”
“First of all, of course it’s worth talking about,” Gingrich said “If someone is gunned down in our national capital, we ought to have a pretty passionate interest in knowing why,” he added. “If it wasn’t a mugging and it wasn’t for money, what was it for?”
“And if Assange says he is the source, Assange may know. That’s not complicated, ” Gingrich continued. “Whether it has any meaning in the presidential campaign, I don’t know, but obviously, look, I’m old fashioned.”
Rich, 27, was shot and killed last month in Washington, D.C., in what police have speculated was a botched robbery. But the killer didn’t take Rich’s wallet, watch or phone, and his death has since fueled numerous conspiracy theories on Reddit— with online commenters suggesting that Rich was an FBI informant, and that he was responsible for leaking the 30,000 DNC emails to Wikileaks, at the behest of a powerful Bernie Sanders donor. No arrests have been made in the murder.
By floating the possibility that Rich was his confidential source, Assange runs counter to U.S. intelligence officials, who concluded this week that the computer breaches were almost certainly linked to Russian hackers.
“It’s all about Hillary and the emails,” Gingrich concluded. “There are so many different points of sickening corruption between Bill, the foundation, the secretary of state’s office, the emails. There’s so much of it you can’t get it straight.”