Thread by @YahooNews

THREAD: In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that DNC staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton yhoo.it/32iCMdG via @Isikoff

This gave rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside President Trump’s White House yhoo.it/32iCMdG

Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony “bulletin” — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case

The purported details in the SVR account seemed improbable on their face: that Rich, a data director in the DNC’s voter protection division, was on his way to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Clinton when he was slain in the early hours of a Sunday morning by HRC's hit squad

Yet in a graphic example of how fake news infects the internet, those precise details popped up the same day on an obscure website, whatdoesitmean.com, that is a frequent vehicle for Russian propaganda yhoo.it/32iCMdG

The website’s article, which attributed its claims to “Russian intelligence,” was the first known instance of Rich’s murder being publicly linked to a political conspiracy yhoo.it/32iCMdG

“To me, having a foreign intelligence agency set up one of my decedents with lies and planting false stories, to me that’s pretty outrageous,” said @SinesDeborah, the former assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the Rich case until her retirement last year yhoo.it/32iCMdG

The previously unreported role of Russian intelligence in creating and fostering one of the most insidious conspiracy theories to arise out of the 2016 election is disclosed in 'Conspiracyland," a six-part podcast series.

Episodes 1 and 2 now available: apple.co/2G2x7PH