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Thread. >> reporter: according to the lawsuit, butowsky had also texted wheeler before the article was published saying, "the narrative in the interviews you might use is that your and malia's work prove that the russians didn't hack into the n dnc and steal the e-mails and impact our election." >> i thought it was horrible because what did that have to do with the murder of this guy that i was investigating? >> reporter: wheeler insists the fox reporter attributed fake quotes to him, one even suggesting he had information that there had been an e-mail exchange between seth rich and wikileaks....

President and sean spicer." joining me is brian stelter. this guy, wheeler, this private detective, he was on fox talking about this story, no? >> he was. he was part of the promotion of this conspiracy theory. the theory, of course, supporting the idea that the president had nothing to do with russia, and suggesting it was actually the dnc, maybe the clintons that somehow shared these dnc e-mails of wikileaks. it is all about fundamentally all about disputing the russia collusion idea. this conspiracy theory is popular in the swamps of the internet, but fox really promoted it in the middle of...

Did malia zimmerman. they knew i never said these things and i challenged them immediately. >> reporter: fox retracted the bogus story a week after it was published. fox news told cnn in a statement today that the accusations that fox helped to detract from coverage of russia collusion is completely erroneous and that it has no evidence that rod wheeler was misquoted. ed butowsky told cnn it was all just a joke. and today white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders pushed back on allegations the white house played a role in this scheme. >> the president had no knowledge of this story an...

Spicer has acknowledged meeting them but said he was unaware of any contact involving the president. still, just two days before the article was published on fox's website, butowski left this voil mail for wheeler. >> hey, rod, it's ed. so, a couple minutes ago i got a note that we have the full attention of the white house on this. and tomorrow let's close this deal. >> reporter: hours later this text from ed butowsky to wheeler. "not to add anymore pressure, but the president just read the article. he wants the article out immediately." and according to the lawsuit, ed butowsky sent an e-mai...

Rich to the wikileaks release of thousands of e-mails from the democratic national committee. the idea being that rich was murdered by some sort of dnc operative in retaliation for the leaks. all of this despite the fact that police say rich's murder was the result of a botched burglary and that this is key, authorities had already determined that russians hacked the dnc e-mails and gave them to wikileaks. what was the goal? >> i think their goal, based on the e-mails and voicemail messages i got from ed putowski was to debunk this russian hacking narrative. >> reporter: ed putowski is a gop s...