BuzzFeed News is standing by a Jan. 18 report that has been disputed directly by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office as well as the findings of the two-year-long federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“Our story was based on detailed information from senior law enforcement sources. That reporting included documents — specifically, pages of notes that were taken during an interview of [former Trump attorney Michael Cohen] by the FBI,” BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith said.
He adds, “There may still be more to learn about the evidence that was gathered, what was and was not included in the report, and how those final determinations were made. As part of that effort, BuzzFeed News has filed more than two dozen Freedom of Information Act requests relating to the Mueller investigation, and has begun to pursue them in court.”
The original Jan. 18 BuzzFeed News report, titled, “President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project,” claimed the president’s former attorney “told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump’s involvement.”
The report added that Mueller’s team “learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office,” claiming that the supposed revelation marked “the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.”
But shortly after the report’s publication, Mueller’s office made a rare public statement, saying the report was not “accurate.” On Thursday, the Mueller report itself, which claimed Cohen actually said he and the president did not “explicitly discuss whether Cohen’s testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow project would be or was false, and the President did not direct him to provide false testimony,” seemed like the final nail in the anonymously sourced news story’s coffin.
But Smith sees it differently.
“As a matter of what constitutes a crime, Mueller has the last word, and his characterization has the force of law,” he said.
But, Smith adds, the Mueller report “finds that Cohen lied, that he did so at what he believed to be the president’s behest, that the president knew he was giving false testimony, and that the president’s lawyers encouraged that testimony. In his report, Mueller wrote that Trump’s attorney told Cohen to “stay on message, and not contradict the President. Cohen has also spoken publicly in more detail about the Trump Moscow lies.”
Trump’s former attorney himself testified on Feb. 27 that the president “told” him “in his way” to lie to Congress. That may be true (in a story involving Cohen and Trump, who do you trust?) but saying “won’t someone rid me of this troublesome priest” is not the same thing as ordering a hit. Which is to say, Cohen saying he’s pretty sure Trump hinted at perjury is still not the same thing as a “bombshell” report alleging the president directly ordered his former attorney to lie to Congress.
“The facts of Cohen’s lies and his interactions with Trump are, largely, now settled. Our sources — federal law enforcement officials — interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president ‘directed’ Cohen to lie,” Smith concludes. “We now know that Mueller did not.”
