President Trump’s legal team contacted special counsel Robert Mueller’s office following BuzzFeed News’ report that Trump instructed his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about his business dealings with Russia.
Trump’s lead attorney Rudy Giuliani confirmed his team’s actions to CNN, but did not provide further detail.
Roughly 24 hours after BuzzFeed published its bombshell report, the special counsel’s office issued rare a statement pushing back on it.
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” said special counsel spokesman Peter Carr.
Two sources told CNN that the special counsel’s office signed off on releasing the statement, after it had been composed internally. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the deputy attorney general’s office also asked Mueller’s team if it was preparing a statement before one was issued.
The BuzzFeed report, which cited two anonymous federal law enforcement officials, claimed that Trump and his children Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. asked Cohen to pursue a Trump Tower in Moscow and share information about the potential project throughout the 2016 election. Afterwards, the report said President Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress about just how long the deal had been discussed.
BuzzFeed has stood by its reporting.
“We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he’s disputing,” the website’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, said in a statement Friday.
Cohen pleaded guilty in November to “knowingly and willfully” making “a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement and representation” to the House and Senate Intelligence committees in 2017. He was sentenced to two months in prison for the charge, which will be served concurrently with the three years he received for campaign finance violations and tax and bank fraud.
