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. he called butowsky to find out why. one day you re going to win an award for having said those things that you didn t say. keep the award. let s just tell the truth here. reporter: in that conversation, was he basically acknowledging to you that, yes, it s true, you didn t say these things but they sound good and we re going to use them? that s exactly what he was saying. he knew it and ed k