The lawsuit Rod Wheeler filed against benefactor Ed Butowsky regarding a discredited Fox News story on the death of Seth Rich is a bombshell, but as we’ve documented, you wouldn’t know that from WorldNetDaily’s treatment of it in misleading about and burying the story.
A key allegation in Wheeler’s lawsuit is that Butowsky worked with the Trump White House to get that story out — an angle WND has heavily downplayed. That treatment, though, seems to beg the question: Did WND also work with the Trump White House to push the story?
Remember, there’s an existing relationship between WND and Trump. In 2012, WND editor Joseph Farah and then-reporter Jerome Crosi were advising Trump behind the scenes in pushing Obama birther conspiracy theories. There is no reason not to believe that WND has continued to maintain a relationship with Trump, and that the Trump White House sees WND as a valuable (and compliant) outlet to promote such fringe conspiracy-mongering. Indeed, as a loyal Trump supporter, WND would have the same alleged motivation as Trump and Fox News in pushing the story: as a distraction from stories about alleged collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 election.
WND has been conspicuously silent about whether it has contacts within the Trump camp to push the Rich story — which tells us that it’s likely trying to hide something.
It’s the elephant in the room, and WND is desperately trying to step around it. Rather, it’s still trying to push the conspiracy: An Aug. 8 article by Alicia Powe stays on the fringe by pushing a demand by politically motivated lawyer Jack Burkman (whom Powe allows without challenged to claim is leading an “independent, nonpartisan” investigation into Rich’s death) for special counsel Robert Mueller to look into Rich’s death because of the “confidential, verifiable information” he purports to have (and which Powe doesn’t bother pressing Burkman on).
Powe references Wheeler’s lawsuit and laments that “Family spokesman Brad Bauman and the Rich family declined to respond to WND’s requests for comment on the lawsuit.” Shouldn’t she be asking her boss about the lawsuit and its implications for WND instead?