Lanny
Davis Says He Was A Source For CNN’s Trump Tower Story. Davis, Michael Cohen’s lawyer and
spokesperson, said he also regrets lying about his involvement in the story on
CNN last week. By Steven Perlberg, 8/27/18, Buss Feed.
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.
In the story, Cohen was reported to have claimed he had
personally witnessed Donald Trump Jr. informing then-candidate Trump about the
June 2016 meeting. Such a claim from Cohen would directly contradict Trump’s
statements about his knowledge of the meeting, where Russians were set to offer
dirt on Hillary Clinton.
CNN’s July 26 story has come under fresh scrutiny in recent days
after Davis acknowledged he had served as an anonymous source for multiple news
outlets who were seeking to confirm the CNN article in the hours after it
published. Davis has backed away from the story in recent days, telling the
Washington Post that he is not certain if the claim is accurate, and that he
could not independently corroborate it.
Last week, Davis told Anderson Cooper, “I think the reporting of
the story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation. We were not
the source of the story.”
On Monday evening, Davis told BuzzFeed News that he regrets both
his role as an anonymous source and his subsequent denial of his own
involvement.
Davis told BuzzFeed News that he did, in fact, speak anonymously
to CNN for its story, which cited “sources with knowledge” — meaning more than
one person.
“I made a mistake,” Davis said. Regarding his comments about a
month later to Cooper, he added, “I did not mean to be cute.”
After Davis publicly backtracked from the claims, the New York
Post and
the Washington
Post outed
him as their confirming source and published apologies from Davis, a lawyer and
communications expert who became well known for his work for Bill Clinton.
The original CNN story — broadcast during Chris Cuomo’s
prime-time show and written by Jim Sciutto, Marshall Cohen, and Watergate
reporting legend Carl Bernstein — said that Davis had “declined to comment.”
His involvement in the story, on so-called “background,” has not been
previously reported.
After publication of this story, Davis added to BuzzFeed News
that he did not lie to Cooper, but that he "unintentionally
misspoke."
"We stand by our story, and are confident in our reporting
of it," a CNN spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.
The unfolding saga around CNN’s July report highlights an
uncomfortable reality for reporters in the Trump era — about the pitfalls of
anonymous sourcing, the dangers of the reliance on capricious narrators, and
what it means for news outlets when the backstory can matter as much as the
story.
As Trump-Russia bombshells often do, the story sparked a dash from
media competitors to confirm the news. One by one — from NBC News to CBS News
to the Washington Post — they did. When another outlet breaks a story,
reporters tend to call up the requisite spokesperson to ask for comment. In
this case, that spokesperson was Davis. BuzzFeed News wrote an
article about
CNN’s story, citing reporting from CNN and NBC News. (Neither Cohen nor his
lawyers responded for comment for that BuzzFeed News story.)
Even for the uninitiated Trump-Russia reader, CNN’s article
appeared a clear message from the beleaguered Cohen team to the special
counsel’s office. The story went a step further than just Cohen’s personal
knowledge: Cohen, CNN’s sources said, was willing to make his claim to special
counsel Robert Mueller. The article came amid the storm of legal troubles for
the embattled Cohen, who weeks later pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes stemming
from a separate investigation led by the US attorney’s office for the Southern
District of New York.
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. Trump, for his part, tweeted that he did not have
prior knowledge about the meeting. His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, sought to knock
down the report, as did Trump Jr.
About a month later, Cohen pleaded
guilty to
criminal charges, including campaign finance violations. Freed from
self-imposed media silence, Davis began making the TV rounds to defend his
client. He appeared across cable news and said that Cohen had information that
would be of interest to Mueller, including what Trump knew of Russian hacking.
But Davis’s complicated role in the Trump Tower story was about to become
apparent after he appeared on CNN with Cooper.
The host pressed Davis on a statement issued by Sens. Richard
Burr and Mark Warner of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The
statement said that Cohen had told the committee in a sworn testimony that he
learned of the Trump Tower meeting when it was reported in July of last year.
Cooper asked how Cohen’s statement to the committee could be true if he also
had prior knowledge of Trump’s awareness of the meeting.
Davis responded that Cohen did not have any knowledge that Trump
knew about the meeting. Davis has since told multiple outlets, including
BuzzFeed News, that the Cohen camp could not seek to correct the CNN story at
the time because it was in the midst of a criminal investigation.
But Davis’s media tour set in motion his outing as a confirming
source for other outlets following the Trump Tower story. Davis said he should
have been much more clear to reporters that he did not personally know the
information was accurate. “I’m glad to take ownership of the mistake. Now I’m
taking the heat, and it’s justified,” Davis told BuzzFeed News.
CNN’s decision to stand by the story has irked some staffers
inside the network, which has taken strong action on errors in the past, forcing
out three employees last summer over a bungled Trump-Russia article.
The network, in effect, doesn’t appear to believe it made a
mistake — the story was, some inside CNN argue, carefully worded to hedge
against those in the Cohen camp changing their tune. In other words, the story
reports claims that Cohen had said he was willing to make, not
the underlying truth of those claims.
The decision from CNN to continue to stand by the story suggests
that it believes the strength of its other sources outweighs any waffling from
Davis — or that the network believes Davis was telling the truth then, and not
now. But Davis’s new statement that he was a source for a story he now refutes
raises questions about what action, if any, the network might take.
“We should address Lanny Davis’s comments in our reporting and
be more transparent with our readers about our reporting,” one CNN staffer told
BuzzFeed News.
In recent days, conservative outlets such as the Daily Caller
have hammered the network,
claiming that Davis’s public admission of his involvement in confirming the
story amounts to a debunking of the original story. The Daily Caller also criticized CNN host Brian
Stelter for not asking Bernstein to defend the report when he appeared on the
network’s weekly media show.
Davis’s role in the CNN story also offers a window into the kind
of anonymous sourcing common across newsrooms. Some news outlets have a policy
to not let sources speak “on background” — that is, as a “person familiar with
the matter” or some other unnamed moniker — and also be allowed to decline to
comment on the record.
In practice, however, reporters and sources often find a good
degree of wiggle room, maneuvering that covers for anonymous sources but can
also deceive readers over the provenance of information.
Reporters will sometimes offer sources inelegant solutions, like
allowing someone to decline to comment on a specific matter so as to allow them
to become a background source on another piece of information in the story. In
the Washington Post’s case, for instance, Davis had declined to comment on the
record, though he appeared as an anonymous source in the same story.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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