The private detective who ignited a false conspiracy theory about a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer sued Fox News and others on Tuesday, saying the network "created fake news to advance President Trump’s agenda."

The suit, first reported by NPR, concerns the murder of Seth Rich, a DNC employee who was shot on a Washington, DC, street in July 2016. Police have described the shooting as a botched robbery. However, according to the conspiracy theory, Rich — not Russia, as US intelligence agencies have concluded — provided DNC emails to Wikileaks and was murdered in response. Right-wing media has latched onto the conspiracy theory as evidence that Trump didn't collude with Russia.

Tuesday's lawsuit was filed by Rod Wheeler, a former DC Metropolitan Police Department homicide detective and Fox News contributor who was hired to investigated Rich's death. Defendants in the case include Fox News, a FoxNews.com reporter, and Ed Butowsky, the man who hired Wheeler.

The lawsuit argues that Fox News defamed Wheeler and destroyed his reputation when it ran a story on Rich in May that included made-up quotes. The issue began in February 2017, according to the suit, when Butowsky — a Texas investor and Trump supporter who contributes to Fox News on financial matters — reached out to Wheeler and offered to pay for the Rich investigation. Butowsky also allegedly told Wheeler he was working with FoxNews.com reporter Malia Zimmerman.

"As it turned out," the suit continues, "Butowsky and Zimmerman were not simply Good Samaritans attempting to solve a murder. Rather they were interested in advancing a political agenda for the Trump administration."



The lawsuit argues that Butowsky and Zimmerman thought they could "undermine reports of collusion between Russia and the Trump administration" by proving Rich leaked the DNC emails.

The lawsuit also details the process that went into producing the FoxNews.com article, and alleges that members of the Trump White House were involved. On April 20, a month before the story was published, Wheeler and Butowsky met with then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer in the West Wing of the White House to review the information they had gathered.

At the time, "Butowsky and Mr. Wheeler met with Mr. Spicer and provided him with a copy of Mr. Wheeler’s investigative notes," the suit states. "Mr. Spicer asked to be kept abreast of developments and, upon information and belief, Butowsky did keep Mr. Spicer abreast of developments."



Spicer told NPR he took the meeting as a favor to Butowsky and was unaware of any contact involving the president.

"Ed is longtime supporter of the president's agenda who often appears in the media," Spicer added in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "He asked for a 10-minute meeting, with no specified topic, to catch up, and said he would be bringing along a contributor to Fox News."

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that "the president had no knowledge of the story, and it’s completely untrue that there was White House involvement in the story." She also said she didn't find Spicer meeting with the media "to be a strange thing."



"You guys are all members of the media... It doesn’t bother me that the press secretary would take a meeting with someone about a story," Sanders said at a White House press briefing. "I’ve taken meetings with the majority of the people of this room, and we don't always know the nature of the stories beforehand."



Tuesday evening, Wheeler's attorney Douglas Wigdor told BuzzFeed News that he wants to depose President Trump and Spicer as part of the suit.

"We will, of course, seek documents and testimony from [Trump] as well as Mr. Spicer to determine what communications he had with other people in the White House and Mr. Butowsky," Wigdor said in an email.

But despite the White House's insistence Tuesday that Trump wasn't involved, the lawsuit states that Butowsky texted Wheeler to say that the president had read the still-unpublished FoxNews.com article and "wants [it] out immediately. The text was sent two days after the meeting with Spicer, and prior to the article's publication.