CNN Issues Crucial Corrections to Date and ‘Proper Context’ in Trump Jr Wikileaks Report

‘Initial Reporting … Was Incorrect'” says CNN, but insists the incorrect information “was confirmed by two sources”

CNN

CNN backtracked from a bombshell report Friday that would have been a major scoop in the ongoing investigation into collusions between the Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign and Russia.

“CNN’s initial reporting of the date on an email sent to members of the Trump campaign about Wikileaks documents, which was confirmed by two sources to CNN, was incorrect,” the network said in a statement. “We have updated our story to include the correct date, and present the proper context for the timing of email.”

At the top of the report — which you can read here — CNN put a clear correction, in addition to their official statement.

“This story has been corrected to say the date of the email was September 14, 2016, not September 4, 2016,” the correction reads. “The story also changed the headline and removed a tweet from Donald Trump Jr., who posted a message about WikiLeaks on September 4, 2016.”

As the correction suggests, the issue was one of dates. The original story said that President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had received stolen DNC emails on September 4, 2016 from Wikileaks via a man named “Mike Erickson.” The Wikileaks documents came with an encryption key that Trump Jr. could use to view the information. CNN says the erroneous reporting was based on two sources.

In fact Trump Jr. received the information on September 14. That’s significant because the day before, Wikileaks tweeted out the stolen files as well as an encryption key, making the documents publicly available before Trump Jr. received them.

The correction, though seemingly small, essentially negates the whole reason for the story’s existence.

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