CNN is standing by a story published Wednesday night alleging Attorney General Jeff Sessions failed to disclose two meetings with Russian officials on a security clearance form, after a South Carolina congressman said the story had been retracted.
“CNN has been forced to retract their leading story from last night, which falsely claimed that Attorney General Sessions had misled the government by failing to disclose meetings with foreign governments while he was seeking his security clearance,” Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., said in a post on his Facebook page.
“CNN’s story was easily disproved within hours, and has since been removed from their website,” he continued. “This is just one of a long line of false reports coming from the media attacking President Trump, his cabinet and his supporters.”
But CNN neither retracted the story nor removed it from its website, and the network pushed back against Duncan’s accusations on its Twitter account.
“No, @RepJeffDuncan. We did not retract or backtrack on our story. We stand by our reporting. Those are the facts,” CNN’s public relations team tweeted.
CNN said Sessions didn’t include interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and other foreign officials on a security clearance form filled out during his confirmation process.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told CNN that Sessions had initially included meetings with foreign officials on the form, but an FBI employee told Sessions and his staff they didn’t need to be listed if they occurred in his capacity as a senator.
A spokesman for the Justice Department reiterated what happened in a statement released after CNN published its story.
“As a United States senator, the Attorney General met hundreds — if not thousands — of foreign dignitaries and their staff,” Ian Prior, the spokesman, said in a statement. “In filling out the SF-86 form, the Attorney General’s staff consulted with those families with the process, as well as the FBI investigator handling the background check, and was instructed not to list meetings with foreign dignitaries and their staff connected with his Senate activities.
Sessions also failed to disclose his meetings with Kislyak during his Senate confirmation hearing.
