Lawrence O’Donnell Retracts Report on Trump’s Ties to Oligarchs after Legal Threat: ‘I Apologize’

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell retracted his claim that President Trump co-signed a number of Deutsche Bank loans with Russian oligarchs during his Wednesday night program and apologized for publicizing single-sourced, unverified information.

O’Donnell retracted the claim, which he first publicized on his program The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell the previous night, hours after Trump’s personal attorney threatened NBCUniversal with a defamation suit unless the network “immediately and prominently” retracted the story.

“Tonight, we are retracting the story,” O’Donnell said. “We don’t know whether the information was inaccurate but the fact is we do know it wasn’t ready for broadcast, and for that I apologize.”

O’Donnell hedged during his Tuesday night broadcast, stating repeatedly that Trump’s cooperation with “Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin” would be a significant development “if true.”

“I want to stress that is a single source, that has not been confirmed by NBC News,” O’Donnell said. “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.”

The veteran anchor and pundit first admitted he made an “error in judgment” in a Wednesday afternoon tweet sent after Trump’s legal threat became public.

Trump lashed out at O’Donnell in a Thursday morning tweet, suggesting his willingness to air an unsupported allegation was reflective of the partisan attitude of the broader mainstream media.

Trump’s dealings with Deutsche Bank have emerged as a focal point of House Democrats’ oversight efforts. The Trump administration has thus far refused to comply with a subpoena request for a host of Deutsche Bank financial records and administration attorneys are currently challenging the request in court on the grounds that lawmakers lack a legitimate legislative purpose for seeking the documents.