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The Hill reports:
The White House on Tuesday denied that Fox News gave President Trump prior review of a story that raised conspiracy theories about the death of a Democratic National Committee staffer. “The president had no knowledge of the story and its completely untrue that he or the White House [had] involvement in the story,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“Beyond that, this is ongoing litigation and I’d refer you to the actual parties involved, which are not the White House.” The lawsuit is from Rod Wheeler, a former Washington D.C. detective who was investigating the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
Rich has been at the center of conspiracy theories involving last year’s hack of the DNC. One popular theory, for which no compelling evidence has been offered, is that there was a connection between Rich and Wikileaks, which published the DNC emails.
More from Business Insider:
Fox News on Tuesday responded to a lawsuit claiming it worked with White House knowledge to deflect attention from investigations about the Trump campaign’s ties with the Russian government by publishing a “fake news” story, calling it “completely erroneous.”
The story, which was published in May, was subsequently retracted. “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, the network’s president of news, said in a statement Tuesday.
He added: “The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman. Additionally, FOX News vehemently denies the race discrimination claims in the lawsuit — the dispute between Zimmerman and Rod Wheeler has nothing to do with race.”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “The President had no knowledge" of the Fox News story on Seth Rich https://t.co/JhJxrzaZzg https://t.co/YwSqSxwzIg
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 1, 2017