Journalist Matt Couch Sues NPR, Michael Isikoff, Others For Defaming Him In Seth Rich Investigation

Last Updated on August 7, 2020

Journalist Matt Couch, editor in chief of The DC Patriot, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Verizon, NPR, Michael Isikoff, and Seth Rich’s brother Aaron. Couch was instrumental in informing the world about Seth Rich, the slain former Democratic National Committee staffer who many believe was the source of the DNC emails published by Julian Assange at Wikileaks during the 2016 election, which exposed the Democrats’ kiboshing of Bernie Sanders in the primary and the Podesta brothers’ invitation to a Spirit Cooking ceremony. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Couch can be followed on Twitter at @realmattcouch where he covers the Seth Rich case and investigates the political tumult of the modern age.

The lawsuit states: “On August 6, 2020, as part of a six-part podcast entitled “Conspiracyland,”published by Yahoo! News, a subsidiary of Verizon, Isikoff engaged in one of the most irresponsible smear campaigns in contemporary journalism, defaming and disparaging Plaintiff Matthew Couch, the publisher of a widely read online blog, the DC Patriot, and a conservative commentator with over 400,000 Twitter followers, either through his own words or those he plainly endorsed, as a “vicious,” “alt-right” “Internet crankster,” “Internet conspiracy entrepreneur,” “Internet troll” and “Internet bully,” who, from the “mountains of the Ozarks” was spreading “lies” about Aaron, the brother of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer killed in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016 under circumstances that still, four years later, have not been explained. Isikoff is no ordinary “journalist.” Rather, he is a shameless partisan hack, who was personally responsible for helping spread the baseless conspiracy theory that Donald Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election. As this conspiracy theory has collapsed, Isikoff and others in the media have sought to attack and discredit anyone, including Plaintiff, associated with any investigations that would potentially undermine the official narrative promoted by Washington D.C. insiders to destroy Donald Trump.”

Cassandra Fairbanks reported for a site that I edited on an audiotape of journalist Seymour Hersh:

“There are no DNC or Podesta emails that exist beyond May 21 or 22, last email from either one of those groups. What the report says is that some time in late Spring… he makes contact with WikiLeaks, that’s in his computer,” he says. “Anyway, they found what he had done is that he had submitted a series of documents — of emails, of juicy emails, from the DNC,” Hersh said in a call with citizen investigator Ed Butowsky.

“All I know is that he offered a sample, an extensive sample, I’m sure dozens of emails, and said ‘I want money.’ Later, WikiLeaks did get the password, he had a DropBox, a protected DropBox. They got access to the DropBox,” Hersh said.