The Washington Post, The New York Times, and NBC News on Saturday issued significant corrections, retracting earlier reporting that said Rudy Giuliani had been directly warned by the FBI that he was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The stories came out after Giuliani’s office and residence were raided by the FBI on Thursday. The searches were linked to a criminal probe of the former mayor’s business dealings in Ukraine and resulted in the seizure of several communications devices.
“An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation,” read the correction by The Post, which first reported the news. “That version also said the FBI had provided a similar warning to Rudolph W. Giuliani, which he has since disputed.”
“This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings,” the correction added.
The Times, which said it has confirmed The Post’s reporting, also corrected its story.
“An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation,” The Times said in its correction posted at the bottom of the online story. “Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing.”
All the original reports were attributed to anonymous sources.
NBC News said in its correction that its story “was based on a source familiar with the matter, but a second source now says the briefing was only prepared for Giuliani and not delivered to him, in part over concerns it might complicate the criminal investigation of Giuliani.”
NBC said that “as a result” the “premise and headline” of its story had been “changed to reflect the corrected information.”
The corrections are black eyes to the newsrooms which have aggressively reported on Giuliani’s contacts with Ukrainians in his attempts to dig up dirt on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.