In a BuzzFeed News bombshell published Monday night, Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, admitted he was the source of fake news aggressively pushed by CNN and eagerly spread by the rest of their liberal media ilk.
According to BuzzFeed News reporter Steven Perlberg: “Attorney Lanny Davis says he was an anonymous source in a July CNN story that reported his client, Michael Cohen, had privately claimed that President Trump had advance knowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting between his son and Russians — contradicting Davis's own words on CNN's air last week.”
This admission by Davis further damaged CNN’s already wounded credibility after they refused to correct the record when it came to light that the suggestions their source had made were completely false. Davis even explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper last Thursday that his client testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he didn’t know if Trump had had knowledge of the meeting before it occurred. And in that same interview, Davis lied and claimed he was not CNN’s source.
Despite the BuzzFeed News revelation into their false reporting, CNN continued to stand by their original story (which still has yet to be updated or corrected with Davis's recent comments). “CNN’s decision to stand by the story has irked some staffers inside the network,” Perlberg wrote. “The network, in effect, doesn’t appear to believe it made a mistake…”
Perlberg also discovered that Davis was not just CNN’s source for the false story, but he was also the source behind similar reporting from other news outlets looking to confirm it:
CNN’s story was made all the more convincing thanks to the series of mainstream media rivals “matching” elements of the account, thanks in large part to Davis, who had requested and received anonymity to confirm that CNN’s reporting was accurate.
And as the Daily Caller’s Amber Athey pointed out about the original CNN story, “Davis was also cited on the record as having declined to comment, misleading readers into believing that Davis was not a source for the story.”
This journalistic blunder began back on the July 26 edition of CNN’s Cuomo PrimeTime, when the network’s junior sleuths Jim Sciutto and Carl Bernstein rushed onto the program to proclaim they had the next major bombshell (written alongside colleague Marshall Cohen) that would damage the Trump presidency. The next day, they wrote:
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN. Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said.
But on August 23, Axios’s Johnathan Swan blew their fake news wide open. “Michael Cohen told lawmakers last year, in sworn testimony, that he didn't know whether then-candidate Donald Trump had foreknowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians, three sources with knowledge of Cohen's testimony tell Axios,” he reported. Davis soon appeared CNN’s AC360 and lied about his involvement. Now here we are.
This is CNN.
