Lawsuit says White House pushed Fox to run Seth Rich murder conspiracy story, as Spicer admits meeting

Investigator who was cited by Fox as source of theory about killing of young Democrat staffer says reporter fabricated his quotes - and Donald Trump urged broadcaster to publish bogus story

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Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee data specialist, was fatally shot on July 10, 2016, in a botched robbery attempt, DC police said. Photo: Democratic National Committee

Published: 12:07pm, 2 Aug 2017Updated: 9:35pm, 2 Aug 2017

A private detective who investigated the slaying of a Democratic National Committee staffer alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday that Fox News Channel worked with White House officials to push a discredited theory about the case to undermine allegations of Russian collusion with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The investigator, Rod Wheeler, further claims in the suit that US President Trump was aware of the bogus story and urged Fox to publish it on its website.

Wheeler’s defamation lawsuit - which names Fox News, a Fox reporter and a wealthy businessman as defendants - is an outgrowth of the slaying last summer of Seth Rich, a young data specialist at the DNC.

Rich was killed in his DC neighbourhood in July 2016 in what police said was a botched robbery attempt. But the timing set off a conspiracy theory among Trump supporters and those on the far right: that Rich’s death was somehow arranged by Democratic officials as payback for his supposed leak of thousands of DNC emails and electronic files to WikiLeaks, which published them.

Rod Wheeler's lawsuit against Fox News. Wheeler, an investigator who worked on the Seth Rich case claims Fox News fabricated quotes implicating the murdered Democratic National Committee staffer in the WikiLeaks scandal and coordinated with the Trump administration as it worked on the story. Photo: AP

The emails were an embarrassment to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but Rich’s family and DC police have denied that Rich was the source or that his slaying had anything to do with his work at the DNC. Intelligence sources have said that the emails were stolen from the DNC by Russian hackers.

In May, however, a story was published on Foxnews.com asserting that Rich was the source of the email leak. It quoted Wheeler - who has worked as a Fox News contributor - as a primary source for the allegation.