BuzzFeed News’ supposed “bombshell” alleging President Trump instructed his former personal attorney to lie to Congress has been effectively debunked following the release of the special counsel report Thursday morning.
There were already major problems with the BuzzFeed News story, most especially that special counsel Robert Mueller’s office itself issued an extremely rare public statement claiming the report was not “accurate.”
But Buzzfeed stuck to its guns. And now that the public has access to a redacted version of the findings of the shuttered two-year investigation, which included 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, and 500 witness interviews, it seems all but certain that the BuzzFeed News “scoop” is, in fact, false.
The Jan. 18 report, titled, “President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project,” alleged 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.”
The BuzzFeed News report made it clear that the allegations came from anonymous individuals who were supposedly familiar with the Mueller investigation.
But here is what the actual Mueller report found after thousands and thousands of hours of investigating:
Cohen also said he did not tell the President about the specifics of his planned testimony … [while there is evidence] that the President knew Cohen provided false testimony to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, the evidence available to us does not establish that the President directed or aided Cohen’s false testimony.
Now, this is on top of the special counsel’s office publicly refuting the story, alleging in a statement that the report’s chief claims were not true.
“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,” a spokesman said of the BuzzFeed News report.
Absurdly enough, even after Mueller’s office disputed the article, some in the press maintained that the denial was not actually a denial. Others criticized the Office of Special Counsel for challenging the reporting. Some even claimed the press was the real victim of the questionable reporting. BuzzFeed News, for its part, stood by its story.
However, following the release of the Mueller report, I am not sure how much longer the online news organization can continue to defend its reporting. I’m not sure if it even will continue to do that. Plenty of federal resources went into the Mueller investigation. For the BuzzFeed News story to be accurate, it would mean that two anonymous sources familiar with the investigation uncovered wrongdoing and that it either slipped past Mueller and his team of 40-plus agents or they have conspired to lie about it.
The idea that the report is simply false is much, much easier to believe.
