“It’s not clear how O’Donnell’s reporting made it to air, given that NBC News was unable to verify his reporting,” writes CNN’s Oliver Darcy of MSNBC’s latest iteration of the “Russia owns Trump” theory.
The network should just be honest. After 8 p.m. ET, and especially after 9 p.m. ET, it’s the wild west on their airwaves for anything having to do with Trump and Putin. It’s what that audience craves and so it’s what that audience shall have. If a friend of a friend of a friend claims he’s seen the pee tape, well, there you go. That’s a “source.” Run it.
I wonder if MSNBC will force Scary Larry to address this clusterfark on tonight’s show or if they’ll issue a statement stressing that they’ve been unable to confirm O’Donnell’s reporting and hope that that makes Trump’s legal team go away. From attorney Charles Harder’s letter to the network, via Darcy:
It’s damn near impossible to slander a public figure as public as the president but former prosecutor Renato Mariotti thinks Trump might have a case given the specificity of O’Donnell’s claim:
Trump's lawyer asserts that @Lawrence O'Donnell's statement that "Russian oligarchs" co-signed Trump's Deutsche Bank loans is false and that some publicly available bank documents prove that Trump is the sole guarantor.
This could be a viable defamation claim by Trump. https://t.co/pK7yMeHdzB
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) August 28, 2019
However, since Trump merely claims that he was the only guarantor and that narrow issue can be proven via bank documents, this could be very straightforward.
That doesn't mean that O'Donnell "recklessly disregarded the truth," which is what the law requires.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) August 28, 2019
O’Donnell said during last night’s show that “I want to stress that is a single source, that has not been confirmed by NBC News. I have not seen any documentation from Deutsche Bank that supports this and verifies this. This is just a single source who has revealed that to me.” Legal eagles, would that be enough to get a defamation suit dismissed? He’s not claiming it’s a fact that Russian oligarchs guaranteed Trump’s loans, he’s not claiming that he’s seen evidence to that effect, he’s not claiming that a second source has confirmed that it’s true. All he’s saying is that some guy says so … and, uh, that he trusts that guy enough to report what he said to the entire country.
Smells defame-y.
MSNBC will figure out a way to retreat somehow.
