After Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered in an apparent botched robbery during the 2016 presidential election, Fox News and others in the right-wing media pushed a conspiracy theory that his death was linked to hacked DNC emails that were released by WikiLeaks. In particular, Fox's Sean Hannity doggedly pushed the conspiracy theory even after Rich's family asked him to stop until advertisers began departing his program. Rich's family sued Fox News for continuing to promote the conspiracy theory even after it had retracted a false story about it.