He is totally contemptuous of the NYT and WP.
Cohen points out that it was then CIA director John Brennan who said during a television interview that he got suspicious of Donald Trump's connections to Russia in 2015, long before the emergence of Carter Page and the Steele dossier and that this was reported at the time by both Wapo and the NYT.
Because the CIA isn't supposed to investigate American citizens he would have had to pass that off to then Dir. Comey at the FBI which also would have included the Dir. National Intelligence James Clapper.
If Cohen is contempuous of the NYT amd Wapo its because they knew the real origins of the Trump/Russia-gate scandal and chose to ignore it.