The Lawrence O’Donnell – Deutsche Bank – Russian co-signers story just took another dramatic turn
Last night MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell announced on air that according a single source close to Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump’s loans were co-signed by Russian oligarchs. This news was so stunning, it caused Rachel Maddow to react in visible shock. Today, Trump privately threatened legal action over the story. Now it’s taken yet another turn.
As we explained earlier, Donald Trump is taking an approach that’s very rare for him. Instead of publicly disputing the story on Twitter, he’s privately trying to make it go away by sending his lawyers after Lawrence O’Donnell and MSNBC. In response, O’Donnell posted this tweet this afternoon:
Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.
Well that changes things. But to be clear, it doesn’t sound like Lawrence O’Donnell is casting any doubt on whether he believes the source. Instead he appears to simply be stating that MSNBC has a policy for processing these kinds of things internally before putting them on air, and that he didn’t follow it. None of this means that the story is true or false. We’ll see what O’Donnell has to say about it on-air tonight.
