Notice the carefully crafted words in Lawrence O'Donnell's apology last night for reporting an unverified story about Russian oligarch co-signers on Trump's Deutsche Bank loans:
"Last night, I discussed information that on this show that wasn't ready for reporting. I repeated statements a single source told me about the president's finances and loan documents with Deutsche Bank, saying, if true, as I discussed the information, was not good enough.
"I discussed the information was not rigorous, did not go through the rigorous and verification process here at MSNBC befpre repeating what I heard from my source repeating what. Had it gone through that process, I would not have been permitted to report it. I should not have said it on air or posted it on Twitter. I was wrong to do so.
"This afternoon, attorneys for the president sent us a letter asserting the story is false. They also demanded a retraction. Tonight, we are retracting the story. We don't know whether the information is inaccurate, but the fact is, we do know it wasn't ready for broadcast, and for that, I apologize."
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Eric Trump won't sue, because if he does, O'Donnell and MSNBC will promptly subpoena the Deutsche Bank documents in the discovery process and no one in the Trump family wants that. Sometimes what they'll do is file the face sheet for a lawsuit and then let it quietly expire, but I'd be surprised if it even went that far.
