Malia Zimmerman, a Fox News reporter, was accused of fabricating two quotes for a story that connected now-deceased DNC staffer Seth Rich to Wikileaks in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Washington police detective Rod Wheeler, the private investigator hired by Rich's family and himself a longtime Fox News commentator. The lawsuit, which accused Zimmerman and Trump supporter, Ed Butowsky, of inventing a story to "shift the blame" away from Russia's hacking of the 2016 election, also claims that President Trump collaborated with Fox News and was allowed to review a draft of the story before it was published. 

The plaintiff claims that the motive behind the report was "to shift the blame from Russia and help put to bed speculation that President Trump colluded with Russia in an attempt to influence the outcome of the Presidential election." Wheeler also said that the fabricated quotes attributed to him were meant to back up the network's false thesis, and amount to defamation.