FAKE NEWS/LEGAL/MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A new lawsuit filed in New York claims that President Donald Trump got an advance look on a Fox News story purportedly showing the Russians weren’t behind hacked DNC emails published by WikiLeaks. According to the complaint, Trump pushed Fox News to publish the story ‘immediately.’ The problem was that the story allegedly contained fabricated quotes.
The lawsuit comes from Rod Wheeler, a former D.C. homicide detective and a Fox News contributor. He is said to have worked with Ed Butowsky, a Dallas-based financial adviser with connections to the White House. Together, they investigated the death of Seth Rich, a DNC staffer who was murdered July 10, 2016.
Conspiracy theorists, perhaps prompted by cryptic statements from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, have sought to demonstrate that it was Rich who provided WikiLeaks with emails that gained notoriety during the 2016 election. If Rich did this, that would mean the Russians didn’t. It would perhaps take pressure off of the Trump campaign in an investigation of whether there was collusion…
Fox News published Butowsky’s story and attributed two quotes to Wheeler that the plaintiff now says were fabricated. One where Wheeler said, ‘My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,’ and the other where Wheeler said, ‘My investigation shows someone within the DC government, Democratic National Committee or Clinton Team is blocking the murder investigation from going forward.’
This was fake news, alleges Wheeler in a defamation suit. He says Fox News published the story a few days after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey as a way to shift blame.”
-Eriq Gardner, “Fox Accused in Lawsuit of Publishing Fake News at Trump’s Behest,” The Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 1, 2017 07:19am