A new lawsuit alleges that President Trump had direct input on Fox News’ publishing of a story backing Seth Rich conspiracy theories

A clip of President Donald Trump's Thursday press conference is played on 'Fox And Friends', seen on a monitor outside of the Fox News studios, on February 17, 2017 in New York City. President Trump, a frequent consumer and critic of cable news, recently tweeted that Fox and Friends is 'great'. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

On Tuesday, a lawsuit was unearthed alleging that President Trump worked directly with Fox News to push out a conspiracy theory that became wildly popular on right-wing websites and even garnered brief attention from the mainstream media. The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York by Douglas Wigdor on behalf of Rod Wheeler, names Fox News, Ed Butowsky and Malia Zimmerman as defendants. David Folkenflik at NPR said that NPR had gained exclusive access to the suit.

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At the heart of the lawsuit is a May story (published on Fox News) revolving around the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich. Rich was murdered in the early hours of July 10, 2016, while walking back to his Washington, D.C., apartment. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones began pushing the narrative that Rich had given the leaked DNC emails to Wikileaks — an allegation that, if true, would debunk the claim that Russian agents were behind the hacking of the DNC servers and clear the Trump White House and campaign of any accusations of collusion with Russia. The Fox story quoted Wheeler, who was a longtime paid contributor to the network, as a private investigator hunting down the truth behind Rich’s murder. The Fox story was retracted after its claims of a connection between Rich and the DNC leaks — mainly backed by quotes from Wheeler that he now claims he didn’t say — came under fire for lack of evidence. Rich’s murder is still unsolved, though D.C. police maintain their belief that it resulted from a robbery gone wrong.

RELATED: Fox News has taken a significant step in their coverage of DNC staffer Seth Rich’s death

Ed Butowsky is a wealthy Texan with ties to White House strategist and Trump-whisperer Steve Bannon. The suit alleges that he met with Sean Spicer at the White House, and that in May, before the story ran, President Trump saw the article. According to the suit, Butowsky texted Wheeler, “The president just read the article. He wants the article out immediately.”

On Tuesday, reporter Olivia Nuzzi, of New York Magazine, wrote on Twitter that Butkowsky had told her the story is “bullshit,” that Wheeler needs money and that Wheeler had sought a job in the Trump administration.

The byline on the story belonged to Malia Zimmerman, who has stayed relatively quiet since the story was retracted in May. NPR reports that she is still with Fox News, working on stories unrelated to the Rich murder.

Wheeler alleges that he was deliberately misquoted on two occasions. The quotes appeared in the Fox story, after which Wheeler claims he contacted Zimmerman, saying that he was misquoted and the quotes should be removed. The suit says Zimmerman wanted to remove the contentious quotes, but her bosses at Fox news told her to leave them in the story. The suit also says that after the story ran, Wheeler agreed to go on Sean Hannity’s show on May 16 and did not reveal his misgivings about the story on-air — though he said on the show that he had no direct knowledge of Rich’s emails, according to NPR.

The suit further alleges that Wheeler, a black man, was the victim of racial discrimination during his time at Fox News.

Responding to Rare’s inquiries, Fox wrote:

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. Additionally, FOX News vehemently denies the race discrimination claims in the lawsuit — the dispute between Zimmerman and Rod Wheeler has nothing to do with race.

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