The left-wing media decided to recycle an old fake news story that Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague in a clandestine, late-summer trip in 2016 in their attempt to corroborate claims in Hillary’s phony dossier.
Michael Cohen hit back on Saturday morning, once again claiming he has never been to Prague and he was with his son in Los Angeles, California at the time.
On Friday, McClatchy ran a headline: ‘Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016 confirming part of dossier‘ which caused the fake news media to erupt.
McClatchy reported:
The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.
[…]It’s unclear whether Mueller’s investigators also have evidence that Cohen actually met with a prominent Russian – purportedly Konstantin Kosachev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — in the Czech capital. Kosachev, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of a body of the Russian legislature, the Federation Council, also has denied visiting Prague during 2016. Earlier this month, Kosachev was among 24 high-profile Russians hit with stiff U.S. sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s meddling.
This same fake news story previously circulated. In January of 2017 strangely enough, CNN’s Jake Tapper actually reported the Michael Cohen who traveled to Prague was not Trump’s lawyer, but another Michael Cohen who happened to be born in the same birth year as Trump’s lawyer.
Video of Tapper from last year debunking the Cohen-Prague story:
In January 2017, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that government sources confirmed that it was a different Michael Cohen in Prague. https://t.co/5kHz1r3d0n
— Ryan Saavedra 🇺🇸 (@RealSaavedra) April 14, 2018
McClatchy’s reporting was so abysmal that even Trump-hating, left-wing Comey confidant, Benjamin Wittes questions the sourcing in a tweetstorm:
I’ve thought about this story overnight—and frankly, count me cautious about it until some other news organizations confirm it and fill in some details. A few reasons: https://t.co/02WDIA4j3z
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) April 14, 2018
(1) The sourcing is relatively thin. It is sourced to two sources familiar with the matter, who are presumably not Mueller shop folks. It’s not clear to me what the universe of people who would know this sort of thing from a distance looks like. pic.twitter.com/tXlolwgunI
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) April 14, 2018
Note how the story here hedges on this point, describing the confirmation of Cohen’s presence in Prague only in hypothetical terms. The reporters are being careful not to say that Cohen was actually in Prague—merely that Mueller has developed some reason to doubt his denial. pic.twitter.com/BnS9rSP23v
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) April 14, 2018
(3) It’s a little too good. The Prague meeting is part of the heart and soul of the Steele Dossier. Good intel analysts need to be skeptical of intel that perfectly supports their premises, particularly when it’s a bit thin. Let’s show that discipline here.
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) April 14, 2018
Michael Cohen slammed McClatchy Saturday morning for their poor reporting.
Cohen tweeted: Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven!
Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven! https://t.co/ra7nwjUA0X
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) April 14, 2018
Mueller has nothing and the dossier is pure fiction cooked up and funded by Crooked Hillary.
The post Trump Lawyer Hits Back After Fake News Claims ‘Mueller Has Evidence Cohen Traveled to Prague in 2016 Confirming Part of Dossier’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
