“A massive, massive fuckup”

CNN learns the hard way that relying upon Never-Trumpers as sources is a very bad idea:

CNN late Friday deleted a story from its website that claimed Senate investigators were looking into a Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Trump’s transition team, later issuing a retraction in the story’s place.

The now-deleted story, by investigative reporter Thomas Frank, was published Thursday and cited a single, unnamed source who claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into a “$10-billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump’s transition team four days before Trump’s inauguration.”

But by Friday evening, the story had vanished from CNN’s website. It was not immediately clear when the story was removed, but a tweet linking to the story, from CNN’s Politics account, was also deleted sometime Friday evening.

After noticing the story’s disappearance, BuzzFeed News contacted CNN. More than an hour later, an editor’s note appeared on CNN’s website. A company representative sent BuzzFeed News a link to the note, but did not answer other questions about why the story was removed.

“The story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” the editor’s note said. It did not say which parts of the story failed to meet the company’s standards. The note also apologized to Anthony Scaramucci, a member of Trump’s transition team and an adviser to his presidential campaign, who was named in the report.

A source close to the network, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter, told BuzzFeed News the story was a “massive, massive fuck up and people will be disciplined.” The person said CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker and the head of the company’s human resources department are “directly involved” in an internal investigation examining how the story was handled.

The lesson, as always: CNN is Fake News.