Continuing our long great day’s journey into night, a new lawsuit filed against Fox News alleges that the White House was preemptively briefed on a since-retracted story involving murdered Democratic National Committee aide Seth Rich—a conspiracy theory that Fox News and a wealthy Trump supporter, with the White House’s alleged encouragement, flouted as a distraction from investigation into possible Russian collusion. Of course, the “alleged” part really only applies to the accusations regarding Fox News’ intent and the White House’s endorsement, along with the charge that its reporter, Malia Zimmerman, fabricated quotes to support her story. We now know that the White House actually was briefed before the story ran, because ex-press secretary Sean Spicer actually said as much.
It’s a revelation that has some troubling implications about the relationship between the Trump administration and his Fox News propaganda arm and their possible collaboration on the spread of harmful misinformation. Which, in any other reality besides our dizzying M.C. Escher hellscape, might actually mean something. Today it just means it’s Tuesday and, reassuringly, that there is no chaos.
NPR has a thorough report on the lawsuit filed by Rod Wheeler, former police detective turned private investigator and Fox News commentator, who was hired to look into Rich’s murder in Washington D.C. If you live a relatively healthy life that involves regular constitutionals and sunshine and not listening to Sean Hannity, and you therefore haven’t heard of Seth Rich, here’s a quick primer: The 27-year-old Rich, a DNC employee, was fatally shot on July 10, 2016, in what police say was a botched robbery attempt.
But because of his DNC ties, and thanks to baseless, “just asking questions” assertions on Fox News, a conspiracy theory took root that Rich was actually murdered by the Clinton campaign because he was the mole who’d sent internal information to WikiLeaks—a theory that would thus magically absolve Russia (and therefore Trump) of any meddling in the election. It was an unfounded, ludicrous theory supported by no one but human Benghazi memes like Hannity, Alex Jones, and Newt Gingrich and their vast army of dead-eyed automatic retweeters, and even Fox News eventually retracted it. And now Wheeler, who became the central figure in this 4chan forensics farce, is suing those he says orchestrated the entire thing and made him the patsy.
According to the suit—which came backed by texts, emails, voicemails, and recorded phone conversations—Wheeler was first contacted by Ed Butowsky, an investor and Trump backer who’d also appeared frequently on Fox. At a meeting also allegedly attended by Fox News’ Zimmerman, Butowsky asked Wheeler to look into the case, ostensibly on behalf of Rich’s family. Approximately two months into that investigation, on April 20, Wheeler was then asked to join Butowsky at the White House, so that the two could meet with Sean Spicer and “keep him abreast of the investigation.” Spicer now tells NPR’s David Folkenflik, rather bizarrely, that the meeting “had nothing to do with advancing the president’s domestic agenda—and there was no agenda,” but instead “they were just informing me of the [Fox] story.”
Here’s where we pause to point out, as Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz did this morning, that Spicer denied any awareness of the Rich story in a May 16 briefing. As Spicer admitted today, that was a lie.