now, this lawsuit, which was first reported by npr, was filed by rod wheeler. a former detective, a fox on-air contributor alleging that the motivation behind the article was to establish that seth rich provided wikileaks with the dnc e-mails to shift the blame from russia and help put to bed speculation that president trump had colluded with russia in an attempt to influence the outcome of the presidential election. wheeler says he was asked by a prominent republican donor named ed butowski to investigate that murder and quotes attributed to him were completely made up. wolf? so alex, what s the white house connection to all of this? reporter: a couple things. whe wheeler says he along with the donor met with former press secretary sean spicer and that spicer, that meeting happened back in may. spicer asked them to be kept abreast of developments. then, according to the lawsuit, also a text message from