The lawyer representing a private investigator suing Fox News over the network’s alleged use of fabricated quotes in a news story linking a deceased Democratic Party aide and a WikiLeaks email dump wants to depose President Trump and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer over their involvement in the scandal, according to a report.
“We’re going to litigate this case as we would any other,” attorney Douglas Wigdor told Yahoo News Tuesday. “We’ll want to depose anyone who has information.”
Legal documents filed in a New York federal court by Wigdor on behalf of investigator Rod Wheeler on Tuesday outline the case against Fox News, Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman and Texas financier Ed Butowsky.
In the documents, which were first reported by NPR, Wheeler — a former Washington, D.C., homicide detective — claims he was hired by Butowsky to investigate the death of Democratic National Committee aide Seth Rich, who authorities believe was fatally shot near his home in D.C. in July 2016 during a robbery gone wrong.
Wheeler alleges in the suit that Fox News invented quotes for a fake news story that connected Rich’s death to the leak of Democratic National Committee emails by WikiLeaks and attributed them to Wheeler, sullying his reputation.
Wigdor told Yahoo News that Trump and Spicer are among the key witnesses he will seek to depose because Wheeler further alleges that Butowsky and Zimmerman met with Spicer at the White House in April to discuss the story before its publication. Trump also reviewed drafts of the story, the suit claims.
