The third time was for breaking the 2011 story that the ratings agency Standard and Poor's was expected to downgrade the AAA rating for U.S. government debt. As a CNN anchor, he was awarded his fourth Merriman Smith Award in 2018 as part of a team that broke the news that President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama had been briefed on the now infamous dossier alleging that Russia had blackmail material on Donald Trump.[47]