Updated at 8:35 p.m.: Revised throughout with new information.

A federal lawsuit accuses a Dallas-area financial adviser of orchestrating a "fake news" story with Fox News and the Trump White House to distract the public from the Russia investigation.

The defamation suit filed Tuesday targets Ed Butowsky, a managing partner at Chapwood Investments LLC in Addison and an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump. A private investigator alleges that Butowsky pressed him to buttress a false story by Fox News that blamed the 2016 leak of Democratic National Committee emails on a former campaign operative, even though the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russians were responsible.

According to the suit, Butowsky told the investigator that Trump had seen a draft of the Fox News story and wanted it to run "immediately."

"It's now all up to you," Butowsky texted the investigator. "But don't feel the pressure."

This screen grab of a text that Ed Butowsky allegedly sent to private investigator Rod Wheeler is included in the suit.

Ed Butowsky

Butowsky told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday that he hasn't met Trump and that he was joking with Rod Wheeler, a private investigator from Washington, D.C. and a frequent Fox News contributor. He said Wheeler had asked for his help to get a job at the White House.

Butowsky said the investigator repeatedly told him, "Ed, I break this case, the president is going to hire me."

The financier acknowledged that he had arranged a meeting in April with Wheeler and then-White House spokesman Sean Spicer to share information with the Trump administration that could help it debunk the idea that Russians had leaked the DNC emails.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders shot down the allegation that Trump influenced the Fox News story.

"The president didn't have knowledge of this story," she said during a press briefing Tuesday. "The White House didn't have any involvement in the story."

Earlier this year, Butowsky hired Wheeler to look into the July 2016 slaying of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee employee who was gunned down near his Washington home. Police say his death was the result of a botched robbery.

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Butowsky has told reporters that his intention was to help Rich's parents find closure. But Wheeler told a court that Butowsky had an agenda from the start — to help Trump by diverting attention from an investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Russia. In recent months, that investigation has snared Trump's eldest son, his son-in-law and the U.S. attorney general.

Wheeler argues in the suit that Butowsky was working with Fox News investigative reporter Malia Zimmerman to prove that Rich had released a trove of internal DNC emails to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks before he died. The emails embarrassed the Hillary Clinton camp at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Malia Zimmerman

"Butowsky and Zimmerman hoped that, if they could confirm that Seth Rich leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, that would debunk reports the Russians were responsible for the DNC hacks," according to the suit. "In turn, Butowsky and Zimmerman hoped that, if they could shift the blame for the DNC hacks from the Russians to Seth Rich, this would undermine reports of collusion between Russia and the Trump Administration."

Seth Rich

Wheeler's complaint focuses on a May 16 story by Zimmerman that Fox News retracted a few days later. The story quoted an unnamed source with the FBI who said Rich had sent more than 44,000 internal DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

But Zimmerman's story also relied on Wheeler. It attributed this quote to him: "My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks. I do believe that the answers to who murdered Seth Rich sits on his computer on a shelf at the DC police or FBI headquarters."

Wheeler claims in his suit that Fox News made up the quote and that he reached out to Butowsky to demand an explanation.

"Butowsky stated that the quotes were included because that is the way the President wanted the article," the lawsuit reads.

Investigation starts

Butowsky said a female friend heard information about Seth Rich last year that he felt obligated to share with the man's parents in Nebraska.

"She came back and told me that there was some information [about] how WikiLeaks got these emails," he said. "I thought it was interesting."

The Dallas financial adviser said he connected with Rich's parents in December and asked friends for information about Rich. Earlier this year, Butowsky said, he got in touch with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

Butowsky said Hersh told him about an FBI report that a trusted source had discussed with the journalist. The report allegedly explains that Rich had made contact with WikiLeaks, offered a sample of "juicy emails" and demanded payment for sending documents.

Wheeler's lawsuit also goes over the conversation with Hersh. It claims that the journalist "cautioned Butowsky that the information was not necessarily true, and that, even if true, it did not preclude the possibility that the Russians also hacked the DNC."

Hersh didn't immediately return messages seeking comment late Tuesday, but he told NPR that he hears gossip.

"[Butowsky] took two and two and made 45 out of it," Hersh told the radio station.

The financial adviser said he shared Hersh's information with the Rich family and offered to pay for a private investigator. A friend referred him to Wheeler.

The text that Ed Butowsky reportedly sent to Rod Wheeler in February seeking his help with the investigation into Seth Rich's death.

Butowsky and the investigator met in February. The Rich family officially hired Wheeler the following month, according to the suit.

White House meeting

Wheeler and Butowsky met with Spicer on April 20 — a month before the Fox News story ran — to inform the White House press secretary about the Rich investigation.

Butowsky said he wanted to talk to Spicer about the information he got from Hersh that tied Rich to WikiLeaks.

"I had that [Hersh] audio, and I'm hearing all this stuff about Russia and Trump and I thought, 'here!'" Butowsky said. "By the way, [Spicer] never took it, he never heard it, he never made any recommendations."

Butowsky said he thought the White House could put an end to all the questions by going to the FBI. According to his account, Spicer told him, "Ed, it doesn't work that way."

Spicer confirmed to NPR that he had met with the men but also denied that the president had been involved with the Fox News story.

"Ed's been a longtime supporter of the president and asked to meet to catch up," Spicer told NPR.

The meeting reportedly lasted about 15 minutes.

Days later, according to Wheeler's suit, the lead Washington detective investigating Rich's death told him in an interview that there was nothing to show the shooting was related to emails or anything other than a street robbery.

Wheeler alleges that Butowsky texted him the night before the interview: "[The detective] is either helping us or we will go after him as being part of the coverup."

The Fox stories

Fox News is fighting Wheeler's claim that its reporter made up quotes, but the network did not address allegations that the White House had played a role in pushing the story.

"The accusation that FoxNews.com published Malia Zimmerman's story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous," Jay Wallace, president of news at Fox News, said in a prepared statement. "The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman."

Butowsky showed The News a text message exchange that he said showed Zimmerman had accurately quoted Wheeler.

"Can you read the story now?" Zimmerman reportedly texted the men.

Wheeler replied: "Malia you can add that I do strongly believe that the answers to who murdered Seth Rich sits on his computer on a shelf at the D.C. Police or FBI headquarters!"

Douglas Wigdor, Wheeler's attorney, didn't dispute the text message. But he said Zimmerman included another quote that was false and gave the appearance Wheeler had personally confirmed that Rich emailed WikiLeaks.

Wheeler, however, advanced the theory that Rich had leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks in Fox-related media interviews the week that Zimmerman's story was published.

On May 15, a day before the Fox News story was posted, a Washington affiliate of the network ran its own story, teasing to Zimmerman's upcoming report. Wheeler made himself available for an on-camera interview.

Reporter: "But you have sources at the FBI saying that there is information ..."

Wheeler: "For sure ..."

Reporter: "... that could link Seth Rich to WikiLeaks?"

Wheeler: "Absolutely. Yeah. And that's confirmed."

The next day, when Zimmerman's story had already been published, Wheeler appeared on The Sean Hannity Show on Fox News. He repeated the claim that there was a federal investigator who had seen Rich's computer and case file: "This person, we checked them out — we have to check them out — very credible." Wheeler clarified he hadn't seen the emails himself.

He continued: "When you look at that, with the totality of everything else that I've found in this case, it's very consistent for a person with my experience to begin to think, well, perhaps there were some email communications between Seth and WikiLeaks."

In the suit, Wheeler alleges that Zimmerman, the Fox News reporter, sent him a text in advance of the interview with Hannity.

"Reread the story we sent to you last night [with the false quotes] and stick to that script," Zimmerman allegedly wrote to Wheeler.

The investigator told The News in May that he was referring to Zimmerman's anonymous source in his interviews with the Fox affiliate and Hannity. He said he didn't know the source.

According to Wheeler's suit, the investigator confronted Zimmerman about the false quotes and she told him that her bosses at Fox News had instructed her to leave them in the story.

Rocky aftermath

Fox News retracted Zimmerman's story on May 23 and said it did not meet its editorial standards.

A few days earlier, Wheeler said in his suit, Butowsky revealed a plan to coerce Hersh, the journalist, into revealing his government source.

The plan involved sending Hersh a snippet of their conversation about the FBI report, with a threat that if he didn't name his source, Butowsky would send the full audio recording to "every news agency tonight with your name and phone number on it."

"I was trying to shake down Sy Hersh? Yes, I was," Butowsky said, accusing the journalist of not coming forward with the information he had.

Wheeler and Butowsky's relationship soured after the Fox News story. The investigator's suit described how Butowsky attacked Wheeler on Twitter.

The first tweet on June 26 read: "Fox News story was pulled b/c Rod Wheeler said [he] didn't say a quote...How much did DNC pay him?"

Another tweet followed on the same day: "This shows Rod Wheeler has a major battle with the truth."

Butowsky said he took down the tweets after Wheeler's attorney reached out.

The investigator's lawsuit also argues that Fox News discriminates against Wheeler based on race and that white colleagues with less experience or skill get full-time jobs. The network denied the allegations.

"The dispute between Zimmerman and Rod Wheeler has nothing to do with race," Wallace, the president of news, said in his statement.

Staff writer Steve Thompson contributed to this report.