Yesterday, CNN, the nation’s trusted source in news, ran a story that claimed that Donald Trump, Jr. had received an email giving him the decryption key to the Wikileaks stash of Colin Powell on September 4, 2016, nine days before they became public on September 13. This supposedly showed that Donald Trump, Jr., was, to use the current vernacular, “colluding” with Wikileaks and because everyone simply knows that Wikileaks is run by the Russians, Trump, Jr. was, therefore, colluding with the Russians.

In short order, this major, or so it was claimed, scoop became like Dead Sea fruit in the mouth of CNN as it was revealed to be a fraud. The problem was that no one at CNN had seen the email, it had been described to them by “sources,” and the sources somehow changed the date, either by accident or not.

First out of the gate we have the “update.” In a more genteel age, when a newspaper published something that was proven to be untrue they issued a retraction but that isn’t how CNN rolls. This is the lead reporter on the story:

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/939234692955607040

Then we have the “we did our damndest” apologia from corporate communications:

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. We have updated our story to include the correct date, and present the proper context for the timing of email

— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) December 8, 2017

Then you have this from Brian Stetler who has permanent job security in whitewashing CNN’s f**k-ups

A CNN spokeswoman says there will not be disciplinary action in this case because, unlike with Brian Ross/ABC, @MKRaju followed the editorial standards process. Multiple sources provided him with incorrect info.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 8, 2017

Let’s be clear on this. This is EXACTLY the same fact-set that got Brian Ross suspended. He got bad information and ran with it. CNN, however, tells us something very interesting. Their editorial guidelines permit reporting on documents their reporters don’t even know exist. As Ron White would say, that’s a handy little piece of information to have.

Glenn Greenwald, who is definitely not a convervative of any stripe, made a series of very good observations:

How did @KenDilanianNBC end up claiming to have independently confirmed the same false story? https://t.co/NhLFeta27c Was this an example of sources deliberately disseminating a false story and, if so, why should they get to remain anonymous? https://t.co/kSzQ7hyWQz

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2017

How did multiple sources all mis-read the date and radically misinterpret the document in the same way? What's the rationale for continuing to conceal the identity of these sources who caused so much damage and deceit on the public with their false claims? https://t.co/dixMWJ5OHv

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2017

It's plausible that one person accidentally misread a date on an email. It's completely implausible that "multiple sources" – talking both to CNN and MSNBC – all accidentally mis-read the same date in the same way toward the same end.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2017

At this point you are left with an irresolvable conflict. If the information came from multiple sources, how did they make the same error? Were there multiple sources, or did the CNN reporting team just lie about it? Was CNN deliberately burned to put this story into play? If they were burned, they have to know who burned them and why won’t they out the sources because that would be newsworthy in its own right. I mean, what motive would people have for feeding the Piltdown Man of political stories to CNN?

Last week, everyone (including me) cheered when WashPost outed the source who purposely fed the paper false information as part of the Project Veritas scheme. What's the rationale for protecting the "multiple sources" who apparently fed false information here to CNN, CBS & MSNBC? https://t.co/LuRc74gaUn

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2017

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/939247380045672448

https://twitter.com/Bourgy/status/939286591528415232

This is what seems most likely. And that's why it's hard to imagine CNN identifying them. The WashPost – to great applause – exposed a source last week who lied to them, but she was a nobody-in-DC. Much harder to do when it's a Democratic Congress member or intelligence official. https://t.co/eqTJpZ5n95

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 9, 2017

And it does seem like a bit of a coincidence that the big pusher of the story was California Democrat Ted Lieu and has appointed himself to be Trump’s nemesis.

CNN is trying to make this story go away and they will undoubtedly succeed. But it seems pretty obvious at this point that CNN was targeted by Democrat staffers for an information operation that was worthy of something the KGB would have pulled on a newspaper in Sub-Saharan Africa because CNN seems to have the editorial controls one would expect to find there.