CNN's Brooke Baldwin: Fox News' Seth Rich conspiracy is “the definition of fake news”
Published
From the August 1 edition of CNN's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin:
BROOKE BALDWIN (HOST): Tell me more about the lawsuit that was filed today.
OLIVER DARCY: Right. There's a lot to unpack in this lawsuit, but, essentially what it's claiming is that this wealthy Republican businessman who has ties to the White House, Ed Butowsky, worked with a private investigator, Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler, to push this story out there that Seth Rich possibly leaked the emails from the DNC to Wikileaks, which was aimed at sort of discrediting the narrative that's been put forth that Russia meddled in the election. That's the assessment of the U.S. intelligence committee --
BALDWIN: Which isn't a narrative, it's fact.
DARCY: Right. It's a fact. The U.S. intelligence community believes that Russia meddled in the US election, and this story that was put out there was, was according to this lawsuit, aimed at sort of casting doubt on that, and you can see Sean Hannity, you just played the clips, where he uses it to say, “well, maybe it wasn't the Russians. Maybe it was an internal disgruntled DNC staffer.”
BALDWIN: But not only that, then the additional layer to this story is that this guy who filed this lawsuit is alleging that the White House and the president, knowing that this story was false, pushed it out.
DARCY: Right, so Sean Spicer met with this wealthy Republican businessman and this Fox News contributor and investigator, Rod Wheeler. He just confirmed to us that they actually did talk about the Seth Rich case during that meeting, but he characterized it as a ten minute meeting and he did it out of respect for someone who goes on TV and defends the president quite a bit. And it's also worth noting, though, that Fox is pushing back strongly on this, Butowsky is pushing back strongly on this. Both of them say this lawsuit's not true and it's full of errors, but the claims are quite explosive.
BALDWIN: This is, David Chalian, the definition of fake news, if you want to go there. If the allegations are correct. This story is entirely false. This poor family has been saying to Fox News --
DAVID CHALIAN: And Fox retracted the story.
BALDWIN: Fox retracted the story, thank you, but again, the allegations that this went as high as the White House to push this false narrative out there.
Previously:
It's time for Sean Hannity to go
