I think this could be big. If the lawsuit holds up past Trump’s and Fox’s motion(s) for summary dismissal, what it will mean is: discovery! And we do love discovery, don’t we?
Let me see if I can find a fuller version somewhere, but for now:
Lawsuit Claims Fox News, Trump Conspired on DNC Staffer Murder Story
Cogan Schneier and Colby Hamilton, New York Law Journal
Rod Wheeler, a Fox News commentator and private investigator, alleges unpaid Fox News contributor Ed Butowsky and reporter Malia Zimmerman used fake quotations in the now retracted story.
A minute later, I found a fuller version from the Times, via AP: Source: Lawsuit: Fox Coordinated With White House on False Story – The New York Times
It begins:
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.
The investigator, Rod Wheeler, sued Fox for defamation. His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York, lays out an explosive tale of Trump allies conspiring to push a false story to take the pressure of the Russian collusion investigation off the president, and a news organization willing to show the president its story before it was published.
Note that Rod Wheeler was hired to find evidence against the Democratic National Committee and was hired by a right-winger.
One quote from Fox, a/k/a Faux News, will give everyone a belly laugh. I’ll highlight it:
Fox removed the story from its website a week after it was published, saying that “it was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all of our reporting.” That forced Fox News’ most high-profile host, Sean Hannity, to back away from aggressively pushing the story on the air.
UPDATE 8/1/2017 at 3:47 pm. Just picked this up on Twitter from WaPo: apparently Sean Spicer confirmed the White House was involved with this fake news.
UPDATE 8/2/2017. And two stories I picked up today, both thoroughly covering this business. You can stuff yourself with this:
Source: Lawsuit Asserts White House Role in Fox News Article on Seth Rich – The New York Times
Source, ThinkProgress: Explosive lawsuit alleges Trump reviewed and approved bogus Fox News story on Seth Rich