CNN Reported Lanny Davis Declined to Comment in Article He’s Quoted As Anonymous Source

Last week, Cohen attorney Lanny Davis told Axios that CNN’s bombshell story from July – in which they reported that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller that Donald Trump knew in advance about the Trump Tower meeting – was wrong and that Cohen knew no such thing.

Yesterday, Lanny Davis admitted he was one of the anonymous sources for that very CNN article. Consequently, and aside from the questions this raises about the actual content of the report and what Cohen did or did not know, there is a big question about the reporting itself.

So…why was Lanny Davis quoted as an anonymous source and reported in the same article to have “declined comment”?

Here is exactly how the article references Davis:

Contacted by CNN, one of Cohen’s attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment.

Here is what Buzzfeed reported on Monday.

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.

Buzzfeed also notes that both the Washington Post and the New York Post have since outed Davis as the anonymous source who corroborated their own subsequent stories based on CNN’s original report.

As Mediaite noted last week, this was not a simple comment about a fact Michael Cohen might know. It was a detailed accounting of how he came to possess that knowledge, a claim of a direct eyewitness, and of Cohen’s intent to take that information to Robert Mueller.

CNN PR sent a statement last week to several outlets reporting on the story that reads: “We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting of it.”

Mediaite contacted CNN today regarding this aspect of the story and has not received a reply at the time of this posting. We will update this story in the event they do.