CNN and ABC Lied About Upcoming Comey Testimony.... CNN just Issued Correction But ABC Not YET

CNN has reluctantly corrected a Tuesday report after the release of former FBI Director James Comey's opening statement for his Thursday testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted the report's sources.

The CNN report said Comey was expected to dispute President Trump's claims that Comey said he was not under investigation on multiple occasions.

The report, titled “Comey expected to refute Trump," was based on unnamed sources and said Comey's conversations with the president "were much more nuanced," and that Trump drew the wrong conclusion. 

The story was compiled by four CNN journalists, including Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus.

Borger reiterated the report's claims in an appearance on CNN on Tuesday.

“Comey is going to dispute the president on this point if he’s asked about it by senators, and we have to assume that he will be," said Borger, the network's chief political analyst. "He will say he never assured Donald Trump that he was not under investigation, that that would have been improper for him to do so.”

Comey's opening statement did, however, mention asserting that Trump was not under investigation; however, the statement failed to specify whether Trump was not under criminal investigation, only saying there was no counterintelligence investigation on the president.

"Prior to the January 6 meeting, I discussed with the FBI’s leadership team whether I should be prepared to assure President-Elect Trump that we were not investigating him personally," wrote Comey. "That was true; we did not have an open counter-intelligence case on him. We agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted." 

"During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower, based on President Elect Trump’s reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance," Comey added.

CNN published a correction to its story Wednesday afternoon with the revised headline: "Comey unlikely to judge on obstruction.”

"CORRECTION AND UPDATE: This article was published before Comey released his prepared opening statement," it reads above the original Tuesday story. "The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published."

ABC News published a report similar to CNN's on Tuesday, but had not corrected it as of Thursday morning.

Comey testifies that New York Times story is "fake News"

In today's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, former FBI director James B. Comey said that a New York Times story in February about alleged contacts between Trump intimates and Russian officials was bogus. “In the main, it was not true,” he said.

“The challenge, and I’m not picking on reporters, about writing stories about classified information is the people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on and those of us who actually know what’s going on are not talking about it,” said Comey during questioning from Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho). “And we don’t call the press and say, ‘Hey, you got that thing wrong.’ ”

The story shook the White House. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told “Fox News Sunday,” “The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations. We have now all kinds of people looking into this. I can assure you and I have been approved to say this — that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that that story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it.”

Not only that: CNN reported that the White House had asked top FBI personnel to rebut the New York Times piece, perhaps by speaking to reporters on background — even though the White House at the time was denouncing anonymous sources. The FBI declined to do so at the time.

Attacks from folks such as Priebus prompted New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet to issue this defense: “The Times had numerous sources confirming this story. Attacking it does not make it less true.”

Things have changed. Before, White House officials — a crew known to blast the media for often specious and baseless reasons — were blasting the story. Now a straight-shooting former FBI director is blasting the story. In addition, Comey confirmed Risch’s contentions that the former FBI director responded to the New York Times story by checking with his intelligence sources and informing lawmakers that it wasn’t accurate.

We’ve asked the New York Times for a fresh response. A New York Times spokesperson tells the Erik Wemple Blog, “As we have said previously, we believe in the accuracy of our reporting. Our reporters are currently looking into Mr. Comey’s statement about our story and we plan to report back as soon as we can.”

James Comey FBI Director Fired

FBI Director James Comey has been fired, according to the White House.

"Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office," the White House statement reads.

"President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions," the statement said.