Donald Trump is no stranger to conspiracy theories, and his role in disseminating them may go beyond tweeting links to bogus stories with suggestive captions in all caps.
In fact,
Trump reviewed a story presenting unverified claims about the death of Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee aide murdered in July 2016. He urged the Fox network to publish the story,
according to a new lawsuit against Fox News brought by a disgruntled former contributor.
The lawsuit was filed against Fox News by Rod Wheeler, a former paid commentator for the cable news
channel, who alleges that Fox published a story by reporter Malia Zimmerman with fabricated quotes attributed to him. He also claims the entire process took place with the knowledge of the White
House.
Wheeler, a retired Washington, D.C., homicide detective, was originally hired by Ed Butowsky, a wealthy Trump supporter, in February to conduct a private investigation into the death of
Rich, supposedly on behalf of the victim’s family.
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However, in the lawsuit, Wheeler accuses Butowksy of orchestrating the fabrication of a news story in order to help deflect suspicions
about Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election.
The story, originally published on May 16, 2017, cited information from an unnamed FBI official and also attributed two
quotes to Wheeler, both of which he now denies ever saying.
The first quote read: “My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and
WikiLeaks.”
The second read: “My investigation shows someone within the D.C. government, Democratic National Committee or Clinton team is blocking the murder investigation from
going forward. That is unfortunate. Seth Rich's murder is unsolved as a result of that.”
Fox News retracted the story on May 23, 2017, but without citing specific reasons or editorial
failures. Later, when asked for comment by NPR on the lawsuit, Fox News’ president of news Jay Wallace denied there was any evidence that Zimmerman had misquoted Wheeler.
More intriguing
is the alleged White House angle for the story.
Conspiracy theories, which continue to circulate online, hold that Rich was murdered after he supposedly leaked damaging emails from the DNC to
WikiLeaks — either in retribution or to cover the tracks of the intermediaries who received the emails on behalf of WikiLeaks.
Either way, advocates of the conspiracy theory present it
as “proof” that the DNC leaks were an internal affair, rather than the product of an external hacking mission by a third party, for example Russian intelligence operatives. That latter has
been alleged by others, including senior U.S. intelligence officials.
This theory, in turn, would help dispel speculation that the Trump campaign was aided by the Russian government and
possibly colluded with the latter — a matter now under investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller.
According to the lawsuit, Wheeler and Butowsky met with Sean Spicer, then the
White House press secretary, to discuss Wheeler’s investigation on April 20, 2017. The lawsuit also quotes a voicemail and text from Butowsky in May 2017 indicating that President Trump had seen
a draft of the story before it was published and subsequently went on air with a segment on “Fox and Friends."
Trump was enthusiastic about getting the story exposure — just a few
days after he fired FBI director Jim Comey, apparently over the Russian investigation.
Thus, on May 14, 2017, Butowsky allegedly texted Wheeler: “Not to add any more pressure, but the
president just read the article. He wants the article out immediately. It's now all up to you.”
Asked about the meeting in April by NPR, Spicer replied that he agreed to the meeting as a
favor to Butowsky and was unaware of any contact between Butowsky and the president. For his part, Butowsky told NPR that his statement about Trump approving of the story was a joke.