NBC News issued a correction Thursday afternoon backtracking on an earlier report that claimed federal officials wiretapped the phones of President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen.
In a lengthy editor's note at the start of the article, now titled "Fed monitored Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's phones," NBC News explained the error.
Earlier today, NBC News reported that there was a wiretap on the phones of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, citing two separate sources with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen.
But three senior U.S. officials now dispute that, saying that the monitoring of Cohen’s phones was limited to a log of calls, known as a pen register, not a wiretap where investigators can actually listen to calls.
NBC News has changed the headline and revised parts of the original article.
"The calls are logged by a machine called a pen register," the article reads, explaining a pen register records the numbers of the phone that makes the call and the phone that receives it without recording the conversation.
The original report, titled "Feds tapped Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's phones," was widely covered throughout the day, with media outlets like MSNBC often discussing the ways the ultimately-errant revelation could impact the Trump administration.