The former acting director of national intelligence used an example of erroneous CNN reporting to explain how certain passages of a bombshell book about President Trump’s administration could be both classified and false.
Speaking with CNN anchor Erin Burnett on Friday night, ex-spy chief Richard Grenell used a falsified CNN report in April about the alleged death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to explain how leaks from former national security adviser John Bolton’s tell-all book could contain classified information that also happens to not tell the truth.
“You can tell a story that has a nugget of classified information that is a totally erroneous story that goes off on a tangent and gives a false impression,” Grenell said. “Let me give you one example of a nugget of information that completely is made up and wrong that people believe. It’s when CNN reported for a very long time that Kim Jong-Un was brain dead.”
Watch: @RichardGrenell explains to @ErinBurnett how something can be classified and completely wrong at the same time, using a CNN fake news story as an example. pic.twitter.com/f9ErNp1Vtb
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) June 20, 2020
CNN reporter Jim Sciutto reported that Kim was in “grave danger” following surgery, but the report was later recanted after state media showed evidence that Kim was still alive.
“Now, I can’t go into great details, but the fact of the matter is, that was erroneous but had a nugget of classified information in there, and we couldn’t correct the record because of classified sources and methods,” continued Grenell. “But that story ran for a very long time, and people believed it, and then, it was never really corrected later on.”
In Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened, the Bush-era holdover alleges Trump leaned on Chinese President Xi Jinping with the hope of securing a good deal for farmers. Bolton also said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo handed him a note that said Trump was crazy for meeting in person with Kim, a claim that Pompeo rejected on Thursday.
“There can be a nugget of classified information, there can be something in there that shows sources and methods, it can be talking about things that are classified, but then completely gone in another direction, completely made up, completely misused,” added Grenell. “Life is not so simple that it’s either or.”
