White House denies Fox-Trump connection on Rich story

The White House on Tuesday denied that Fox News gave President Trump prior review of a story that raised conspiracy theories about the death of a Democratic National Committee staffer.

“The president had no knowledge of the story and its completely untrue that he or the White House [had] involvement in the story,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Beyond that, this is ongoing litigation and I’d refer you to the actual parties involved, which are not the White House.” 

{mosads}The lawsuit is from Rod Wheeler, a former Washington, D.C., detective who was investigating the killing of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

Rich has been at the center of conspiracy theories involving last year’s hack of the DNC. One popular theory, for which no compelling evidence has been offered, is that there was a connection between Rich and WikiLeaks, which published the DNC emails.

Wheeler claims his quotes in a Fox story about Rich were fabricated, and that the motivation was to help Trump.

Wheeler was quoted in the story as saying that his investigation “shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks” and that “someone within the D.C. government, Democratic National Committee or Clinton team is blocking the investigation from going forward.”

Rich’s family has repeatedly pushed back against such theories, and Fox has come under criticism for pushing the Rich story.

Fox has pushed back at the Wheeler lawsuit.

“The accusation that FoxNews.com published Malia Zimmerman’s story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous,” a Fox News spokesperson said in an email statement provided to The Hill. Zimmerman is the investigative reporter for Fox who wrote the story.

“The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman.”

Sanders also downplayed the revelation that outgoing White House press secretary Sean Spicer met with a Fox News contributor and a GOP donor on the story at the White House ahead of its publication.

She framed that meeting as part of the press secretary’s official duties in meeting with reporters on potential stories. 

“It doesn’t bother me that the press secretary would take a meeting with someone involved in the media about a story,” she said.

“You guys come to us with stories all day. I’ve taken meetings with the majority of people in this room. I don’t always know the nature of the story of which you are coming to talk to me about, but it’s my job to talk to you.”