“Out of respect for the family’s wishes for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time,” Sean Hannity said. | AP Photo Hannity steps back from DNC staffer conspiracies

Fox News host Sean Hannity said on Tuesday he would step back from discussing the murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich, hours after the slain staffer’s family made an emotional public plea for media figures to “stop politicizing our son’s murder.”

Hannity, who has devoted numerous segments of his program in recent weeks to an unproven conspiracy that Rich, a former staffer for the Democratic National Committee, had been murdered as retaliation for leaking documents to WikiLeaks, said he would not continue discussing the matter out of respect for Rich’s family


“Out of respect for the family’s wishes for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time,” Hannity said on his program.

The Fox News host said he made the decision to rein in his coverage of the killing after speaking directly with Rich's brother.

“My heart, my soul, my prayer goes out to them during this very difficult time," he said.

Hannity's retreat came hours after the Fox News personality seemed content to double-down on conspiracies surrounding Rich’s 2016 murder.

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The WikiLeaks retaliation theory has been widely debunked, and on Tuesday Fox News retracted a May 16 online article on the investigation surrounding Rich’s murder – an article Hannity heavily-promoted on his primetime cable news show.

“The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting,” the network said in a statement released Tuesday, days after the story had been disproven. “Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed."

But even as his network backed away from the conspiracy, Hannity had continued to lean in.

“I stand by everything I said & have said on this topic,” Hannity tweeted Tuesday evening, linking to his radio program where he reiterated his belief in the Rich conspiracies.

Hannity, who has faced mounting criticism over his insistence in propagating debunked theories over Rich’s murder, also vowed to carry on his work with the network.

“I promise you I am not going to stop doing my job to the extent of my ability, I am not going to stop trying to find the truth, every single day,” he said. “I serve at the pleasure of the Fox News channel.”

Hannity also decried efforts by the liberal media watch dog group Media Matters to have him removed as a host from the Fox News Channel.

“There is an effort now to silence me,” he said. “Media Matters is attacking my advertising base.”

Hannity, minutes prior to going live, also alluded to conversations with his legal team, promising to “#StopLiberalFacism,” a term he went on to use to describe Media Matters.

“Just got off the phone with 3 of my attorneys,” he said on Twitter. “You may think I have Lost it, but they are so amazing. #StopLiberalFacism”

The Fox News host — who in the past has teased big announcements related to other Fox controversies, only to mostly ignore them on-air — again promised big news in the lead-up to his Tuesday program.

“Huge announcement tonight about Seth Rich, Trump/Russian Collusion corrupt media, the liberal effort to silence me,” he tweeted. “And my future at Fox!”

Describing the lingering stories about Seth Rich’s demise as their family “nightmare,” Rich’s parents, who’ve previously called on those spreading falsehoods surrounding their son’s death to stop, made an emotional plea Tuesday to members of conservative news outlets to no longer “peddle discredited conspiracy theories that Seth was killed after having provided WikiLeaks with emails from the DNC.”

“There are people who are using our beloved Seth’s memory and legacy for their own political goals, and they are using your outrage to perpetuate our nightmare,” they wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece. “We ask those purveying falsehoods to give us peace, and to give law enforcement the time and space to do the investigation they need to solve our son’s murder.”

Hannity, for his part, has maintained that his continued coverage of Rich’s demise has stemmed from a desire to find “truth.”

“I will address this suffering family tonight at 10,” he tweeted earlier Tuesday. “It breaks my heart. Know this, I will pursue the truth wherever it may lead, 4 justice.”