How the CNN Buddy Of GPS Fusion Owners May Have Shaped Coverage of the Russia Probe

The Daily Caller has a great article today that goes a long way towards explaining a lot of CNN’s coverage of the Trump Dossier. Long and short of it, the CNN reporter covering the dossier story, ‘justice correspondent’ Evan Perez, is best of friends with the owners of Fusion GPS and he has never once mentioned those ties.

CNN’s reporting on the dossier, led by justice correspondent Evan Perez, has been favorable to the firm, Fusion GPS, and hyped the dossier’s credibility. Left out of Perez’s reporting, which has relied largely on unnamed sources, is his personal closeness to Fusion GPS’ operatives. Fusion has repeatedly been described in Senate testimonies as a smear-for-hire operation that manufactures misleading or false media narratives for its clients.

Glenn Simpson, the Fusion co-founder most often associated with the dossier, is used to working on stories with Perez. As reporters at the Journal, Perez and Simpson regularly co-authored stories on national security.

Another Fusion founder, Tom Catan, worked as a reporter for the Journal at the same time as Perez and Simpson. The third Fusion co-founder, Peter Fritsch, worked above Perez and Simpson as the senior national security editor.

Simpson and Fritsch left the WSJ in 2011 to launch Fusion. Perez jumped from the paper to CNN in 2013. Another longtime Journal reporter, Neil King, left the paper to join Fusion in December 2016.

The article contains several images of Perez drinking, fishing, etc. with his Fusion GPS buddies and they note the the Wall Street Journal has hinted at this relationship in an oblique type of way:

Mr. Mueller will grind away at the Trump-Russia angle, but the story of Democrats, the Steele dossier and Jim Comey’s FBI also needs telling. Americans don’t need a Justice Department coverup abetted by Glenn Simpson’s media buddies.

What do they mean by “coverup abetted?” Well it could be this, and I apologize in advance for the broken hearts of all the Jake Tapper fanbois out there:

CNN’s coverage of the dossier has been relatively soft. CNN anchor Jake Tapper, usually known for his aggressive coverage, gave Fusion a pass while reporting on the story Wednesday evening.

During a segment on his show, he asserted that “some of the details [of the dossier] have been proven accurate.” But the newsman failed to mention reporting he did back in January that called the dossier’s credibility into question.

On Jan. 10, the day that BuzzFeed published the dossier, Tapper cited a government source who told him that a key claim in the dossier about Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, was false. The dossier alleged that Cohen traveled to Prague last August to meet with Kremlin operatives. But Tapper reported that government officials believed that a different Michael Cohen had actually traveled to the Czech Republic. Tapper has not acknowledge that reporting since that initial segment.

Suspicious, no?

And the fact that CNN has been in the forefront of pushing the lie that a Republican candidate or donor was the initial funder of Fusion GPS opposition research on Donald Trump. We know now that the funding source was the Washington Free Beacon which is neither a candidate, a donor, or even Republican.

If you go to Google, you find Perez had run quite a few stories on the dossier. In fact, it was his story, “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him,” back in January, that really got the whole Russia/Trump-dossier story up and running.

To date, Perez and CNN have failed to acknowledge that Perez has been reporting on a document produced by close friends of his, and whom it looks like from his reporting he has used as a source.

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