LA Times: Three CNN journalists resign over retracted Trump-Russia story
Three journalists from CNN’s investigative unit are leaving the network after the retraction of their June 22 story connecting an ally of President Trump to a Russian investment fund.
The story, citing an anonymous source, said Senate investigators were examining a meeting between Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci and an executive for the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The $10-billion fund makes direct investments in Russian companies.
Here’s the original story that CNN retracted, from the archive.org WayBack copy on June 22:
Congress investigating Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials
There isn’t much info on what aspect(s) of that story prompted CNN’s statement that “standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published.” I’m guessing it was mainly that they only had one source for the alleged Scaramucci meeting, and that there were factual errors, e.g., RDIF has denied any connection to sanctioned Russian bank VEB, although the LA Times notes:
The [CNN] site added that although the facts in the story were “not solid” enough for publication, CNN has not said the story is false.
The connection to VEB was crucial to the conspiracy web, as Jared Kushner has had dealings with that bank that the Senate Intelligence committee is investigating.
Scaramucci’s reponse on twitter:
As an aside, Scaramucci also tweeted this yesterday:
Which is kind of weird because the lame NY Post story was published in January. Is it now propagating again through the right wing fake news machine? Mike Flynn now trending on twitter!