McClatchy added an editor’s note to two of its high-profile 2018 stories on Michael Cohen after special counsel Robert Mueller refuted its reporting that the former Trump attorney has traveled to Prague.
In Mueller’s report, released by the Justice Department on Thursday, Mueller wrote Cohen “had never traveled to Prague,” refuting one of the central allegations made in the controversial dossier put together by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
The day the dossier was made public in 2017, Cohen tweeted out a picture of his passport along with a claim that he’d never been to Prague, and he has steadfastly denied the allegation ever since. Cohen also testified under oath to Congress earlier this year that he had never been to Prague.
In the report released Thursday, Mueller definitively stated that “Cohen had never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false.” The allegations about Cohen traveling to Prague stemmed from Steele’s dossier, which Steele claimed was based on high-ranking Russian sources. Steele said Cohen went to Prague to meet with Putin-linked Russian operatives and hackers.
McClatchy’s editor’s note, which was added to at least two of its Cohen-Prague stories, read: “EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Mueller’s report to the attorney general states that Mr. Cohen was not in Prague. It is silent on whether the investigation received evidence that Mr. Cohen’s phone pinged in or near Prague, as McClatchy reported.”
McClatchy reported in an April 2018 email that Mueller had evidence that Cohen was in Prague during the 2016 presidential election. The report said “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.” This was based on “two sources familiar with the matter.”
McClatchy stuck with its reporting in December 2018 in a piece that said Cohen’s cellphone signal was detected around Prague in the summer of 2016. The report said a mobile phone traced to Cohen “briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials.” This reporting was based on “four people with knowledge of the matter say.”
McClatchy published a follow-up piece on Thursday. This report did not say if the outlet stood by its April 2018 story, but did say “the December 2018 reporting was based on information from five individuals with foreign intelligence connections, who all requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information shared and concerns about sources and methods. Each obtained their information independently from each other. McClatchy stands by the reporting.”
Steele put together his dossier in the summer and fall of 2016. He was paid for his research by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was funded in part by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. The dossier was used in Foreign Intelligence Suveillance Act applications presented before the court to surveil at least one Trump campaign associate.
Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, is investigating abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The inspector general’s office said it would “examine the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court relating to a certain U.S. person.” That “certain U.S. person” is onetime Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
The Justice Department inspector general also stated it would “review information that was known to the DOJ and the FBI at the time the applications were filed from or about an alleged FBI confidential source. Additionally, the [Office of the Inspector General] will review the DOJ’s and FBI’s relationship and communications with the alleged source as they relate to the FISC applications.” This “alleged FBI confidential source” is widely believed to be Christopher Steele.
Steele is reportedly refusing to cooperate with the Justice Department’s inspector general investigation.
Cohen is slated to begin a three-year prison sentence in May for campaign finance violations and fraud and recently sent a letter to Congress through his lawyer in an attempt to avoid prison time.
