WATCH: Man at center of Fox lawsuit says Trump insisted bogus story include fake quotes on Seth Rich

Longtime Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler, the man at the center of this week's bombshell lawsuit against Fox News over its coverage of the Seth Rich murder, made some even more startling statements on MSNBC Wednesday.

Mediaite notes that, during an interview with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, Wheeler alleged that Trump donor Ed Butowsky -- a wealthy investor who pushed Fox News to cover the Seth Rich story -- told him that Fox was leaving fake quotes from Wheeler in its story because President Donald Trump said he wanted them left there.

"When I confronted Butowsky about it, he said ‘the quotes were left in there because that’s the way the president wanted them.'" Wheeler explained. "And I said, wait a minute, why is the president even involved in a murder investigation from a guy that was killed in northwest D.C.?"

Wheeler's lawsuit against Fox includes a text message from Butowsky that says President Trump personally reviewed details of a Fox News story about Seth Rich and insisted that he wanted it published as soon as possible. Fox eventually retracted the story, which Wheeler's lawsuit alleges was used as an attempt to distract from the investigation into Russia's involvement with Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Butowsky has denied that Trump actually read the Fox story before it published, however, and he said that his text messages saying otherwise were meant in jest.

Watch the full interview of Wheeler below.