On Monday, three CNN journalists responsible for publishing a Trump administration hit piece last week that turned out to be untrue resigned from the network, according to a report by Brian Stelter of CNN. The disgraced employees responsible for the fake Russia-related article are Thomas Frank, who authored the story, and editors Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris. Lichtblau oversaw the botched story, while Haris headed up the network's investigative unit. An anonymous CNN spokesperson said on Monday that the network has accepted the letters of resignation.

CNN falsely claimed that Trump adviser was under investigation

On Friday, CNN was forced to retract a story from its website alleging that a member of the Trump transition team, Anthony Scaramucci, was under Senate investigation for discussing the lifting of sanctions against Russia shortly before Trump's inauguration.

Lichtblau, who recently joined CNN after a lengthy stint at The New York Times, devoted a great deal of time to reporting on the story of Russian election tampering, often relying upon anonymous and unnamed sources. The Scaramucci story was Lichtblau's second story in as many months which turned out to be untrue, forcing CNN to issue embarrassing retractions.

Lichtblau's first botched story for CNN, published before former FBI director James Comey testified before Congress, claimed that Comey was prepared to refute the president's claim that he had been assured by the FBI director that he was not the subject of an investigation.

Comey's testimony later confirmed Trump's version of the story -- forcing CNN to perform a re-write of the article co-written by Lichtblau.

CNN's Stelter attempts damage control

According to CNN's Brian Stelter, network management conducted an internal investigation after the Scaramucci story was published and concluded that "standard editorial processes" were not followed.

Stelter, however, downplayed the significance of the Fake News scandal, referring to the incident as a "breakdown in editorial workflow" and insisting that the retraction of the article did not necessarily mean that CNN was guilty of faulty journalism.

"In a staff meeting Monday afternoon, investigative unit members were told that the retraction did not mean the facts of the story were necessarily wrong," Stelter wrote on Monday evening. "Rather, it meant that the story wasn't solid enough to publish as-is."