the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The NEA responded to the story by denying all of its accusations. Brendan Nyhan, later a political science professor at the University of Michigan, wrote that The Washington Times story was a "lie" and a "myth". In 2018, The Washington Times published a commentary piece by retired U.S. Navy admiral James A. Lyons which promoted conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich. Lyon wrote that it was "well known in intelligence circles that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron Rich, downloaded the DNC emails and was paid by WikiLeaks for that information." The piece cited no evidence for the assertion. Aaron Rich filed a lawsuit against The Washington Times, saying that it acted with "reckless disregard for the truth" and that it did not retract or remove the piece after "receiving notice of the falsity of the statements about Aaron after the publication". Rich and The Washington Times settled their lawsuit, and the paper issued an "unusually robust" retraction. On January 6, 2021, after violent pro-Trump rioters attacked the United States Capitol, The Washington Times published a false story quoting an unidentified retired military officer claiming that the facial recognition system company XRVision had used its technology and identified two members of Antifa amid the mob. XRVision quickly denied this, sending a cease and desist to The Washington Times, and issued a statement saying that its technology had actually identified two Neo-Nazis and a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory and that it had not done any detection work for a retired military officer authorized to share that information. On January 7, the article was removed from the website and replaced with a corrected version. Before the correction, Representative Matt Gaetz cited the original story as proof that Antifa were partially responsible for the attack in the floor debate of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count, and it was widely shared on social media. The Washington Times has at least twice published articles, one written by the ambassador of Turkey to the US and one by an attorney and lobbyist for the Turkish government, that deny the Armenian genocide. Science coverage Climate change denial The Washington Times is known for promoting climate change denial. Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, characterizes the Times as a prominent outlet that propagates "climate