Critics chide CNN for refusing to retract false Trump-Cohen ‘bombshell’ report

Both Conservative and liberal critics have chided CNN for refusing to issue a correction that US President Donald Trump did not have prior knowledge of the Russian Trump Tower meeting.

This comes as Trump’s lawyers speaking publicly on his behalf and his longtime “fixer”-turned-foe Michael Cohen have been fumbling the facts of late.

Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, spent recent days walking back his bombshell assertions that his client could tell the special counsel that Trump had prior knowledge of a meeting with a Russian lawyer to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

“I should have been much clearer that I could not confirm the story,” Davis said Monday, attempting to clean up his comments in interviews last week after Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion and bank fraud.

Sara A. Carter, a national and international investigative reporter, took to her website to call out CNN for refusing to follow other major US news outlets in issuing a retraction or correction of the reporting.

“Davis changing his story has prompted many of the news outlets to issue a retraction or correction of the reporting, with only one holdout remaining, CNN. As of Tuesday evening, CNN has not issued any corrections, rather it has decided to further stand behind its reporting,” Carter wrote.

Liberal writers like Glenn Greenwald also pitched in, writing in The Intercept that “it’s certainly possible that CNN had other sources for this story besides Davis, who now repudiates it”.

“It’s hard to see how CNN’s story could be true given that Davis, Cohen’s own lawyer, explicitly says that Cohen has no information that Trump had prior knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting, that Cohen cannot and will not tell Mueller that this happened, and that Davis’ prior claims about Cohen’s knowledge and intentions are false,” Greenwald said.

(With The Associated Press)