CNN got it wrong.
The news network, which is often derided as left-leaning by Trump supporters, has corrected a report it gave Tuesday on former FBI Director James Comey’s expected testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The reports’ sources have since been contradicted.
The CNN report claimed Comey was expected to dispute President Trump’s assertion that Comey had told him several times that he was not personally under investigation in the probe over Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The now-debunked report, originally headlined “Comey expected to refute Trump,” cited unnamed sources who said Comey’s conversations with the president “were much more nuanced,” and that Trump drew the wrong conclusion.
CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, one of the four bylines on the web report, doubled down on air before the statement was released Wednesday.
“Comey is going to dispute the president on this point if he’s asked about it by senators, and we have to assume that he will be,” she said at the time. “He will say he never assured that he was not under investigation, that that would have been improper for him to do so.”
But Comey’s opening statement did support the president’s own claim that he had asserted that Trump was not personally under FBI investigation.
CNN published the following correction on Wednesday afternoon with a revised headline:
“CORRECTION AND UPDATE: This article was published before Comey released his prepared opening statement,” it reads above the original Tuesday story. “The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published.”
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
