This is the sixth and final part in the Yahoo News “Conspiracyland” series. Read and listen to the first five parts here.As Aaron Rich saw it, the rantings of Couch — a onetime sales manager in the Arkansas Ozarks whose relentless tweeting and aggressive support of President Trump had garnered him more than 100,000 Twitter followers — couldn’t have been more offensive.
“Pretty much everyone who loses a loved one in a mass shooting that gets a significant amount of media attention is at some point told that their family member was a crisis actor who didn’t really die,” says Anna Merlan, author of a new book, “Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power.”
Just five years earlier, Corsi had been one of the country’s most vigorous promoters of “birtherism,” the false claim that then-President Barack Obama hadn’t been born in the United States. As Corsi acknowledges in a “Conspiracyland” interview, Trump — who also took up the birther cause in 2011 — consulted with him during this period, looking for information he could use to question Obama’s legitimacy as president.
But the facts notwithstanding, Stone’s podcast chat with Corsi pushed the Rich story in a new direction. The host accused Rich’s parents, Joel and Mary, of participating in a cover-up by pleading with the media to stop perpetuating conspiracy theories about their son’s murder. It was a plea, Stone argued, that should be ignored.
But Couch argued there must have been something compromising because Aaron Rich hadn’t released his brother’s records to Couch and his motley team of investigators. “Aaron — you won’t release the phone records,” Couch said as he read Rich’s letter to his Twitter followers. “Aaron, you won’t release the laptop, you won’t release the phone, you won’t cooperate with investigators, so — yeah, we have said you’ve covered things up.
On July 6, 2016 — just four days before Seth Rich’s murder — Capone had taken his daughter and a friend on a public tour of the White House. The internet conspiracy theorist detectives, led by Couch, soon discovered this and started targeting Capone. As Capone recalls it, the internet hordes charged that he was having secret meetings with operatives from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. To further highlight the matter, he said, they posted photos of his family on the internet.
Isikoff ... that the police quickly determined was a botched street robbery? Why didn't they take his wallet? Or the credit cards & money in it?