This is the equivalent of telling your employers, “Bite me!”

We’ve been bringing to you the story of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory and how Fox’s Sean Hannity will not let the story go, in spite of requests from the family to stop pushing this lie about their son to the public.

It has turned into a real hot topic among the same people that still think #PizzaGate is a thing, with “evidence” just as flimsy.

It seems Fox News finally listened to the calls to stop allowing their network to be used as a weapon with which to torture the Rich family, and issued a retraction of the hoax, as Jim Jamitis pointed out earlier.

Hannity, however, must feel he has better options on the horizon if he keeps pushing this, in defiance of what his network wants.

On his radio program today, Hannity declared, “I am not Fox.com or FoxNews.com, I retracted nothing.”

Really, dude? Is that your play?

Hannity really has lost it, at this point. If he ever possessed any credibility, that has gone the way of Fox News’ ratings.

“For those accusing me of pushing a conspiracy theory, you are the biggest phony hypocrites in the entire world,” Hannity said Tuesday.

“This issue, it’s so big now that the entire Russia collusion narrative is hanging by a thread,” he said, referencing media coverage of the investigations into the Trump campaign and ties to Russian election meddling.

“If in fact, take Seth out of it, there was a whistleblower within the DNC — a truth teller that was actually the source for WikiLeaks, not Russia — working with the Trump campaign. These are questions that I have a moral obligation to ask and I will do the mainstream media’s job like I have most of my career.”

And therein lies motive.

Hannity is so enamored of Trump, such a devoted lackey, that he would torpedo the credibility of his own network to draw attention away from all the incriminating stories surrounding the president, right now.

This is expert-level unhinged.

“You’re trying to take down a president, and I’m trying to get to the truth,” Hannity said on his radio program.

“I have an agenda to get to the truth,” he continued. “I’m not saying I have answers yet, but I’m digging deep, and I have a lot more information than all of you do at this point.”

Except all of his “evidence” is from a dubious source with a background in the fantastical and self-promotion. None of it is concrete or reliable. He’s grasping for something – anything to create news where there is none.

“For all of you in the media, I’m not going to stop doing my job and asking questions, because I know the lies you’re telling, and the conspiracies you’ve spun, with no evidence, to destroy a president in conjunction with the deep state,” Hannity added.

Again, couldn’t these issues be treated separately? Hannity is admitting that he’s doing this to save the president. He’s doing it in defiance of his network, in defiance of the ongoing, legitimate investigation being done by law enforcement, and in defiance of the family’s wishes.

This isn’t his job.

Now the question is, how long before Fox and the new bosses at the helm grow weary of Hannity’s rush to turn Fox News into an Infowars spinoff?