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McClatchy Reporter Says Report on Cohen’s Prague Trip Cited Third-Hand Evidence

Dec 28th, 2018, 1:02 pm

McClatchy’s Greg Gordon, one of the journalists behind the explosive report on the president’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen visiting Prague amid the 2016 election, admitted that he did not see first-hand some of the primary evidence used in the piece.

On Thursday, McClatchy reported that there is evidence showing Cohen visited the Czech Republic during Trump’s presidential run, which — if true — would confirm information from the Steele dossier. McClatchy cited third-hand information from foreign intelligence agencies as placing Cohen in Prague during that timeframe, which was reportedly gathered via cell phone data.

While on MSNBC last night, Joy Reid asked Gordon if he and his colleague Peter Stone cited “anything that you were able to physically see for yourselves?”

“I wish we had. We held out for a while for that, and it came a time when we thought we had a critical mass. It is a competitive business,” he replied.

Gordan continued: “Some of the sources have government sources, and some of the sources are people who have told us that they have trusted intelligence-type sources that they get information from. We don’t know the specifics, but we have used these sources on many subjects, and they have been very accurate.”

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It's one of the enduring misconceptions of the Trump-Russia affair.

During the 2016 Republican convention, the story goes, the Trump campaign weakened a critical passage in the GOP platform to go easy on Russia. The Trump team acted, according to this narrative, as part of an ongoing conspiracy with Russian President Vladimir Putin to help Donald Trump win the White House.

But that is not what happened. In fact, an already-tough portion of the Republican platform dealing with Russia was strengthened, not weakened, at the GOP convention. Here is what took place:

The original draft of the platform — it has never been released publicly, but an insider shared the relevant passages with me — had strong language on Russia, and in particular on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Warning of "a resurgent Russia occupying parts of Ukraine and threatening neighbors from the Baltic to the Caucasus," the platform vowed to increase U.S. pressure on a "reckless" Russia.

"We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union," the platform said. "We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine or elsewhere, and will use all appropriate measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination."

It would be hard to call that a pro-Putin statement. Every word of it stayed in the final platform.

When the platform committee met before the GOP convention in Cleveland, one delegate out of the 100 on the committee — a Texas political activist named Diana Denman — proposed an amendment. Denman, who came to the convention as a Ted Cruz delegate but later switched her support to Trump, was interested because she had traveled to Ukraine as an international election observer in 1998 and has ever since "kept an eye on the emerging democracies," she told me in a conversation last March.

Denman's amendment praised the Ukrainian people and said they deserved the greatest U.S. assistance.

"We therefore support maintaining (and, if warranted, increasing) sanctions against Russia until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored," Denman's proposed amendment read. "We also support providing lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine's armed forces and greater coordination with NATO on defense planning. Simultaneously, we call for increased financial aid for Ukraine, as well as greater assistance in the economic and humanitarian spheres, including government reform and anti-corruption."

Denman's amendment also included an introductory paragraph filled with a lot of generic rhetoric. When she proposed the amendment, a Trump national security aide named J.D. Gordon, who was in the room with the platform committee, wanted to edit it. According to Denman, Gordon got on the phone, saying he was calling "New York" to discuss possible changes.

At the behest of the Trump campaign, the platform committee took out the throat-clearing introduction and changed Denman's reference from "lethal defensive weapons" for Ukraine to a pledge to provide "appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine." They left intact Denman's language on NATO, and on continued and possibly tougher sanctions on Russia.

The final, Trump-approved passage read: "We support maintaining and, if warranted, increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored. We also support providing appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine and greater coordination with NATO defense planning." That was the amendment the committee approved.

In the end, nothing was taken out of the party's original draft platform on Russia. At Denman's behest, and with Trump's approval, the platform was made tougher with language pledging ongoing and possibly increased sanctions. It was also made tougher with Denman's reference to "NATO defense planning," which had not been in the original draft.