This is an old tactic of trial lawyers. They ask a leading or argumentative question, or make some statement that is argumentative. The other side objects, the judge sustains the objection, directs the record to be stricken, and then tells the jury to disregard the remarks. Of course the jury can’t unhear what they heard.
The MSM tells the big, loud, front page lie. The lie echos around all the other MSM outlets. The lie gets exposed, but only the original liar has to retract. The others, after all, were only reporting that someone else had reported something.
Most of those casually connected to the news have been inoculated with the lie, and it is now part of the story.
These incidents need to be pursued. With lawsuits, prosecutions, and most of all with ridicule.
Yesterday I thought this flop / fake news was attributable to a mole op, particularly given there have been a number of dubious "reports" of late that could easily be leak testing. But .... given the statement(s) then forthcoming, from the bank and White House lawyer - I'm also considering it could be that the fake news had some grain of truth - ala it's possible that Mueller had subpoenaed bank records for something other than Trump - maybe for Fusion GPS OR the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative. See:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/48617: Read about Bill Clinton, Tom Steyer & Deutsche Bank in Wikileaks -
"He also said he's worried about the pensions commitment and not having real projects to announce at CGI america. I said we are concerned too and explained cf/cci/cgi discussions with deutsche bank, tom steyer, kkr, etc. He said ira suggested we at CF or CCI just create a fund and do the investing for the aflcio. I explained aflcio doesn't have the money, the States do, and that if we tried to do it in-house there might be some complexity around us running a fund. And that also would entail hiring a bunch of finance folks. He said ira told him the CCI finance guy had resigned. I said he is still working and actually was a part of our kkr call today and always has been a part of our pensions discussions. He said to call him in addition to ira to get more movement on the pension stuff."