President Trump Helped Direct Bogus Fox News Story: Lawsuit

WASHINGTON, DC — President Donald Trump personally reviewed a now-retracted story by Fox News that essentially claimed that Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee had a staffer murdered in retaliation for the leak of the DNC's emails during the election campaign, according to a new lawsuit filed against the network.

Fox News reported in May that there was solid evidence that Seth Rich, a DNC staffer who was killed last July in what police believe was a botched robbery in D.C., was behind the DNC leaks and not the Russian government — a claim that is completely counter to the consensus opinion of U.S. intelligence agencies. The conspiracy theory that Rich was the leaker and was murdered on behalf of Clinton has long circulated among extreme right-wing websites, but Fox News was the first mainstream outlet to give it any credibility. A week later, it retracted the story when its lone source, Rod Wheeler, denied claiming anything of the sort.

Now, Wheeler is suing Fox News, according to an NPR report. Wheeler, who is a Trump supporter and a paid commentator at the network, claims that the Fox News reporter created quotations out of thin air and Trump himself personally reviewed the story along with then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer a month before it ran

The lawsuit focuses on a wealthy Trump supporter, Ed Butowsky, who offered to pay for Wheeler to investigate Rich's death on behalf of his parents. On April 20, Butowsky and Wheeler met with Spicer at the White House, the suit claims according to NPR.

The lawsuit includes a voicemail and text from Butowsky that boasts that Trump himself had reviewed the drafts before it was published.

Spicer now reportedly says that he took the meeting as a favor to Butowsky, and Butowsky claims he was just joking about Trump being involved.

"Rod Wheeler unfortunately was used as a pawn by Ed Butowsky, Fox News and the Trump administration to try and steer away the attention that was being given about the Russian hacking of the DNC e-mails," said Douglas Wigdor, Wheeler's lawyer, according to NPR.

The original story, written by Malia Zimmerman, was extraordinary because it attempted to give credence to conspiracy theories that essentially claimed that Clinton or the DNC ordered the murder of a staffer over leaks. When Wheeler backed out of the story, however, Fox News was forced to retract the story.

UPDATE 10:56 a.m.: Butowsky denies the report.

Ed Butowsky tells me federal lawsuit is "bullshit" and denies sharing Fox article with WH. "I've never spoken to Trump in my life," he says.
— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) August 1, 2017

UPDATE 12:00 p.m.: The Rich family has responded.

Statement from the Seth Rich family pic.twitter.com/p7siiOIYKh
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 1, 2017

UPDATE 1:03 p.m.: Fox News president of news Jay Wallace denied the allegations in a statement emailed to Patch: "The accusation that FoxNews.com published Malia Zimmerman’s story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous. The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman."

Image via Gage Skidmore