Venezuelan Opposition Leaders Detained; Lawsuit Fox News & White House Made Up Seth Rich Story
SESAY: Hello, everyone! You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles, I am Isha Sesay.</s>VAUSE: I'm John Vause. We'll take the headlines this hour. Rex Tillerson says the U.S. is willing to hold talks with North Korea proving the Pyongyang includes its nuclear weapons program in those negotiations. The U.S. secretary of state insists, Washington is not pushing for regime change, but he says Pyongyang is posing an unacceptable threat, and the U.S. must respond.</s>SESAY: President Donald Trump says the U.S. is holding Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, personally responsible for the safety of two opposition leaders. The men were pulled off of their home in the middle of the night and thrown in jail. The pro-Maduro Supreme Court says Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma were detained because they were planning to flee. The opposition leaders publicly opposed the new assembly that has the power to rewrite the constitution.</s>JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Two suicide bombers killed at least 29 people at Tuesday in a Shiite Mosque in Western Afghanistan. Police say one of the bombers started firing on worshipers and then blew himself up. The second bomber also blew himself up in the crowd of people that gathered their evening prayers, still unclear who is responsible for the attack.</s>SESAY: Apple shares all surging an after hours trading. After the company predicted it would be the expectations and hit $52 billion in sales in the fourth quarter. And that's suggest Apple well indeed launched its new iPhone come September. Apple earning also sold 17 percent in the third quarter. Now a bombshell lawsuit against Fox News claims that the White House played a role in the network fake story about a murdered DNC staffer.</s>VAUSE: And also like this story was department effort to distract from the conversing course by the ongoing Russia investigation. We get details from Brian Stelter.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a possibility, this is a guy who provided two Wikileaks all those DNC e-mails.</s>BRIAN STELTER, SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A false story peddled by Fox News, could have finger print that reach all the way to the White House. A new lawsuit filed in federal court claims Fox concocted the story about the murder of 27 year old DNC Staffer Seth Rich and claims the White House have oversight it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If it was true that Seth Rich at Wikileaks and DNC e-mails would not blow the whole Russia collusion narrative that the media has been pushing out of the water.</s>STELTER: That is part of this pro-Trump conspiracy theory. Rich's family says his death had been exploited by right-wing media. At the center of the story is Ed Butowsky a wealthy Republican donor. Tuesdays suit followed by Rod Wheeler a Fox News contributor claims Butowsky and Fox were in cahoots contriving a link between Rich and Wikileaks. Wheeler worked with Butowsky investigating Rich's death.</s>ROD WHEELER, FOX FORMER PRIVATE DETECTIVE: It's very consistent for a person with my experience can begin to think, well perhaps there were some e-mail communications between Seth and Wikileaks.</s>STELTER: Rich's family says, "That's not true". And D.C. police believe his killing was a bust robbery nothing politically motivated. But that didn't stop Fox.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It sure doesn't look like a robbery. It looks like a murder.</s>STELTER: After days of coverage back in May, the network retracted the story. Now a month later Wheeler's explosive lawsuit says he was misquoted defamed by Fox. And his suit goes much further claiming Butowsky coordinated the phony story with the White House. Why quote "to shift the blame from Russia and refute coalition claims?" Butowsky named as a defendant in the suit strongly denies the allegations. ED BUTOWSKY, TRUMP SUPPORTER and</s>REPUBLICAN DONOR: The lawsuit is absolute crap. There's nothing to this law suit that has any in there whatsoever.</s>STELTER: This text mess age from Butowsky to Wheeler is one of the suits most eye-popping claims. "Not to add anymore pressure but the President just read the article. He wants the article out immediately. It's now all up to you but don't feel the pressure". Butowsky now says he was just kidding around."</s>BUTOWSKY: I was just joking with the man. And that's all that was.</s>STELTER: The White House pushing back as well.</s>SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The President didn't have knowledge of the story. The White House didn't had any involvement in the story.</s>STELTER: But there is a link to the White House. Butowsky and Wheeler met with then Press Secretary Sean Spicer a month before the phony Fox story came out. Spicer says it was just a 10 minute courtesy meeting and the White House had nothing to do with his story. But the suit claims that Spicer asked to be kept addressed of developments. As for Fox it calls the accusation that it published the Seth Rich story did detract from the Russian Coalition Issue "Completely erroneous".</s>VAUSE: And Brian is with us now from New York. You know Brian it took Fox a week to retract this particular story after it was published. But the network they've been, they were hammering this bogus story along before that and creating their selves narrative. It wasn't the Russians in fact the DNC it was Seth Rich and this ultimate example of fake news its living on to this day.</s>STELTER: It is. It's a counter narrative that is popular amongst some Trump voters who do not accept the U.S. Intelligence Community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the U.S. election. That is of course partly predicated on the Wikileaks release of DNC e-mails, e- mails stolen from the DNC. There's a lot of other evidence involving Russian interference. But the DNC e-mail is one piece of the puzzle. And the Seth Rich conspiracy theory suggests are actually assert. No, it wasn't Russia it was this DNC staffer who stole the e-mails and then got them over to Wikileaks and he was killed for doing so. Imagine the heartache that this has put those Rich's family through. They say this conspiracy theory is bogus but it's been an increase source of amount pain for the family that is already grieving for the loss of their child. Now they have to see these kinds of story all over the place and Fox perpetuated it.</s>VAUSE: And they had beg for weeks asking the network --</s>STELTER: That's right, yes.</s>VAUSE: -- to stop putting to end, you know, for whatever reason it took a consider amount of time. You mentioned Wikileaks. According to the lawsuit, the Fox News reporter attributed two fabricated statements to Wheeler define at here. Here are those statements, "My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of e-mail exchange between Seth Rich and Wikileaks". And that the other statement, "My investigation show someone within the D.C. government, Democratic National Committee or Clinton Team is blocking the murder investigation from going forward. That is unfortunate. Seth Rich's murder is unsolved as a result of that." Now this is what Wheeler said was his first reaction when he saw those bogus lines attributed to him.</s>ROD WHEELER, PLAINTIFF: The reporter from Fox News Malia Zimmerman she wrote that story. I immediately challenged her. And I said, "Malia that's just simply not true, you and I both know this isn't true". And she said, well her boss has told her to leave those quotes in there. And I said, "Why would you leave something in an article that you know is not true?" And that's why we're here today.</s>VAUSE: So Brian, the court filing Wheeler alleges "That's how the President wanted the story". We don't know if that's true. At the very least can we say the White House did nothing to kill the story which it knew to be totally false?</s>STELTER: I think of it on the Fox News side the ethics of Fox's behavior here are -- they're lacking to say the least. The idea that the boss is wanted this out there. They're pushing this story, it's a survey and from a journalistic ethics point of view, this is a disaster for Fox News. They retracted it. They said they're still investigating. Who knows what will happen. But on the White House side I think it's murkier. I think it's unclear exactly how much involvement there was at the White House. We know Sean Spicer had this meeting with Wheeler where it talked about the investigation. Spicer suggested there weren't any other conversations after that. The lawsuit contradicts him and says Spicer wanted updates on what was going on. Now, the lawsuit also says Steve Bannon was in touch in some way with the GOP donor who was pushing this. So it's murky. And I think there's more reporting that needs to be done on the White House piece of this.</s>VAUSE: You know, we don't know if these allegations are true. We don't know how much involvement there was from the President of the United States. Did he work with Fox News to fabricate the story? But it comes just out after the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump dictated a false story about his son's campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer. You know, these accusations would lead devastating for any president. But it seems especially so for a president who complains almost daily about fake news.</s>STELTER: And this is a false news story. What Fox was pushing at may was a false story. And it came at a terrible time for President Trump. Terrible time, meaning he had just fired James Comey. He had shared top secret information with the Russians in the Oval Office. He was at that moment. The low point is presidency, his gone lower since. But at that time it was the low point in his presidency. And what did Fox do? It touted this story to made him look in some ways good and give a counter narrative to all the Russian coalition questions. So this was for Trump it was a story he needed at that moment. Does that mean the White House was involved in someway? As you said, we don't know. We need to have more reporting on this. Maybe the lawyers will be able to get more through the discovery process in this lawsuit.</s>VAUSE: Very quickly last question here. Wheeler, he is claiming he was forced to correct the record that goes un-repairable (ph) harm to his reputation and career but how reliable is he and how reliable is his testimony?</s>STELTER: I have questions about that because he was at Fox by the time he was saying some of the stuff on the air at the time. And now he is telling us somewhat different story. It is unclear, you know, why he's had this change of heart. I have questions about that that I would like to ask him. But the bigger issue here as you've been hearing on John, is the White House, is the Trump White House and its deceptive nature the Washington Post story being the most recent example. And then you hear about this, the idea that Fox and the Trump White House are working together in order to concoct this story. The reason why I'm taking it seriously is because of the Trump White House credibility crisis. And because of its past behavior trying to influence and interfere in news conference.</s>VAUSE: And of course, in all of these a complete and total disregard it seem for, you know, what the parents of this young man have been going through, I believe in prime (ph).</s>STELTER: At the status protocol.</s>VAUSE: Yes, Brian, good to speak with you. Thanks so much.</s>STELTER: Thanks.</s>SESAY: Quick break here. The Brexit vote exposed some deep risk in British society. A new polling suggests that risk may actually be getting worst, not better.