https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stevenperlberg/lanny-davis-cnn-trump-tower-story
Lanny Davis Says He Was A Source For CNN’s Trump Tower Story
Davis, Cohen’s lawyer and spokesperson, said he also regrets lying about his involvement in the story on CNN's air last week.
By
Steven Perlberg
Last updated on August 27, 2018, at 10:21 p.m. ET
Posted on August 27, 2018, at 9:10 p.m. ET
Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Attorney Lanny Davis says he was an anonymous source in a
July CNN story that reported his client, Michael Cohen, had privately claimed that President Trump had advance knowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting between his son and Russians — contradicting Davis's own words on CNN's air last week.
In the story, Cohen was reported to claim he had personally witnessed Donald Trump Jr. informing then-candidate Trump about the June 2016 meeting. Such a claim from Cohen would directly contradict Trump’s statements about his knowledge of the meeting, where Russians were set to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton.
CNN’s July 26 story has come under fresh scrutiny in recent days after Davis acknowledged he had served as an anonymous source for multiple news outlets who were seeking to confirm the CNN article in the hours after it published. Davis has backed away from the story in recent days, telling the Washington Post that he is not certain if the claim is accurate, and that he could not independently corroborate it.
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Last week, Davis told Anderson Cooper, “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.”
On Monday evening, Davis told BuzzFeed News that he regrets both his role as an anonymous source and his subsequent denial of his own involvement.