Discredited theories
Some of the same sites also falsely connected the death of the late DNC staffer Seth Rich, fatally shot last year in Washington, DC, to the same suit. Fox News — after complaints and denial from Rich’s family and investigators — wound up retracting another internet-inspired conspiracy theory that Rich’s death had been connected to DNC email hacks that were leaked to help President Trump’s campaign.
The Whisenant postings focus on the fact that the prosecutor died in the south Broward district of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was chairperson of the DNC during the primary season.
People close to Whisenant say they have seen the postings and are “disgusted” with the exploitation of his death, saying he had no connection to the DNC case. For most of his career, he had been in private practice. Whisenant, a graduate of the University of Florida law school, had worked as a state prosecutor in Jacksonville and later for almost a decade at a Miami civil law firm, Foley & Mansfield, before joining the U.S. attorney’s office in January.
“I find that type of behavior disgusting and offensive,” said a close friend, who did not want to be identified. “To use someone’s death to manipulate a scenario that has no basis in truth is disturbing.”
At his former firm, Whisenant focused on asbestos and other tort litigation but also worked at least once as a guardian ad litem in Miami-Dade County family court, representing the interests of a child in a long-running dispute between a father and mother over financial support, visitation rights and other custody matters.
After Whisenant issued his guardian ad litem report early last year, the father began sending the lawyer a series of “hostile” emails, challenging the findings, making “personal attacks” and threatening to sue, according to the attorney’s Jan. 25, 2016, motion seeking sanctions against the father.
Whisenant asked the presiding judge in the case to keep the father away from him. The judge issued the stay-away order the following month.