by Susan Duclos, All News Pipeline:

Back in July 2018 CNN reported “Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting,” (Archive.is link here) in regards to a June 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr. attended, along with Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and four Russian sources, that he believed would reveal damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

The meeting was dud, no follow up was arranged. Donald Trump Jr. and President Trump maintained that the then-candidate Trump was unaware of the meeting until after it had occurred.

HOW CNN MAKES FAKE NEWS GO VIRAL

Here is how CNN began it’s “bombshell” report:

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.

Note that despite their headline saying “Cohen claims,” they immediately acknowledge it was not Cohen claiming this, but unnamed sources claimed that Cohen claimed that President Trump was aware of the meeting beforehand and that Cohen was willing to tell that to the special counsel.

From July 26 to July 28, CNN’s article was cited by The Hill, CBS News, Huffington Post, NBC News, Axios, NPR, Reuters, Washington Post, BBC, CNBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Vox, New York Post, and those are just listed on the first few pages of a Google search using the time range function.

Despite no sources being named and Cohen, nor his attorney Lanny Davis, confirming the breaking viral story, it became the media’s de-facto truth……. until nearly a month later.

After news broke that Michael Cohen had been convinced to plead guilty to a range of charges, including setting up payments to two women on behalf of the then-candidate Trump before the 2016 presidential election, the media hysteria reached a fevered pitch, but one major story got lost in the chaos.

The original CNN story about the Trump Tower meeting and the claim by CNN, or their so-called “sources” was completely false.

On August 21, 2018, the day the Manafort trial verdict and the Michael Cohen plea story came out, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) issued an immediate statement, which included the following:

“We have obviously followed today’s reporting about Michael Cohen with great interest. He appears to be pleading guilty to very serious charges, however, we have no insight into any agreements he and his legal team have allegedly reached with prosecutors in New York. 

“What we can say is that we recently re-engaged with Mr. Cohen and his team following press reports that suggested he had advance knowledge of the June 2016 meeting between campaign officials and Russian lawyers at Trump Tower. Mr. Cohen had testified before the Committee that he was not aware of the meeting prior to its disclosure in the press last summer. As such, the Committee inquired of Mr. Cohen’s legal team as to whether Mr. Cohen stood by his testimony. They responded that he did stand by his testimony.

According to Axios, Cohen had offered that same testimony to the House & Senate intelligence committees, telling them both he “had no foreknowledge of the meeting but that he had no idea whether Trump did either.”

Now Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, claims that CNN’s bombshell report, was bogus and that his client does not have any information that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting beforehand.

Davis claims the CNN report got “mixed up.”

“Well, 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. And the question of a criminal investigation, the advice we were given, those of us dealing with the media is that we could not do anything other than stay silent…”

So that viral story, which all news outlets picked up, citing CNN’s original blockbuster,  ended up pushing fake news, all at once, and all trusting CNN’s supposed “sources,” which of course remain unnamed.

As a side note we found that the CBS News report, which points out that CNN first reported the claim that Cohen “is willing to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that the president knew in advance of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Mr. Trump’s son,” also claimed that their own reporter had “confirmed” CNN’s report.

Not only did CBS News claim they confirmed the information, NBC News took it a step further back in July, stating that “a knowledgeable source told NBC News,” the same thing that CNN’s “sources” told them.

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, asserts that Trump knew in advance about a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 between his son Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer, in contradiction to Trump Jr.’s congressional testimony in May 2017, a knowledgeable source told NBC News on Thursday night.

The source told NBC News that Cohen is willing to inform Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, that Trump Jr. told his father about the meeting. Cohen’s assertion was first reported by CNN.

So, multiple outlets confirmed with their own sources, after CNN broke the fake news story, and all their sources gave them the same false information.

Does that sound in any way plausible?

THE PATTERN OF MEDIA BEHAVIOR IN CREATING VIRAL FAKE NEWS STORIES

The reason I offered that side note is because this is the exact same thing that happened when CNN falsely reported that Donald Trump Jr. had been notified, via email, about a Wikileaks release, publishing the wrong date from the email that their “source” had read to them, which was supposedly offered to Trump Jr. before Wikileaks had published the information publicly. CNN, and others heavily implied that it proved Don Jr. was working with Wikileaks, therefore proved Russian collusion.

When the email in question was finally published, after the story went viral on multiple outlets, it was revealed that the email sent to Don Jr. was sent after Wikileaks publicly had released the information. CNN and many others had published a false date.

Again, other outlets at the time, claimed they too had “confirmed” the information, before updating/correcting/editing their stories to explain the mix up in dates.

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