Former detective claims Fox News colluded with Trump administration to produce false news on Rich murder investigation

A contributor to Fox News has sued the network for releasing fake news about the murder of Democratic aide Seth Rich to draw attention away from the Russia investigation. Rich’s family had hired retired detective Rod Wheeler to investigate the murder. Wheeler claimed that Fox News made up quotes from him in an article about Rich. The network later retracted the article. (Courthouse News Service, August 1, 2017, by Adam Klasfeld)

The suit contends that the Trump administration, a supporter Ed Butowsky, and Fox News colluded to distract the public from the Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election. The retracted article falsely claimed that Rich, who worked for the Democratic National Committee, shared thousands of the committee’s emails with WikiLeaks, a scenario that weakened the proposition that Russian intervened in the election to help Trump. (The New York Times, August 2, 2017, by Emily Steel)

Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post, August 1, 2017, writes that there is no basis for the loony conspiracy theory that came from the Fox Story that Hillary Clinton had Rich killed for sending emails to WikiLeaks during the campaign. She says the Trump administration did nothing to dispute the story, and Fox commentator Sean Hannity pounded the story until the Rich family begged him to stop.