Buzzfeed feeds the buzz: Michael Cohen says that Trump asked him to lie to Congress, and Mueller says…
The left and Trump’s other opponents keep trying to find the fatal stake to drive through the vampire Trump’s heart. I have completely lost track of all the sequential stories that have gotten them so excited, thinking the task was finally about to be accomplished, which then fell though.
But the anti-Trump forces barely pause to muster their strength before going on to the next story, and then the next.
Some of these stories are more believable than others. Some are more well-sourced than others; some more plausible. None have accomplished the desired goal, and all have been either debunked or certainly revealed as less important than originally thought.
The latest of these bombshells—one that has had Trump’s enemies as excited as I’ve ever seen them—is the Buzzfeed story that erupted last night and goes like this:
President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.
William Jacobson summarized the story this way:
The short version is that two unnamed federal law enforcement sources told Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold, the leading reporter on the story, that Mueller has evidence both through testimony and documentation that Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a potential Trump Tower Moscow hotel deal timeline.
The Buzzfeed reporters have not seen the evidence underlying their report.
Never mind that it was Buzzfeed, not well known for veracity (nor is Michael Cohen, for that matter). Never mind the shakiness of the reporters’ knowledge of the evidence and never mind the anonymity of the sources. The story was so very juicy that it was enough to send many who detest Trump into a feeding frenzy, calling for investigation and/or impeachment and/or Trump’s resignation.
But surprise, surprise, Mueller has issued an announcement:
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.
That’s somewhat vague. Which descriptions of which statement, which documents and which testimony? We probably will never know, and we probably don’t need to know the specifics (although it would certainly be nice) in order to strongly suspect that the Buzzfeed report is so inaccurate as to be virtually meaningless. Mueller’s office doesn’t ordinarily issue these sorts of denials. When it does, I can’t imagine that it would be for a trivial reason.
Here’s an interesting tweet from Ronan Farrow:
I can’t speak to Buzzfeed’s sourcing, but, for what it’s worth, I declined to run with parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind.
— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) January 19, 2019
At the moment, it looks like this “Trump asked Cohen to lie to Congress about Russia” story will go the way of the rest. If people were sensible, this chain of events would make even Trump’s enemies look askance on future poorly-sourced stories of this nature. But that won’t be happening. For those people who believe Trump’s guilty, they just know the evidence is there, and all they have to do is finally find it. They believe that some day that will happen.
That’s some of them. Others don’t care whether he’s guilty or not, or whether evidence is true or not. He’s the enemy, and he must be destroyed.
[NOTE: Prior to the Mueller statement, I decided to check on what Alan Dershowitz had written about the Buzzfeed allegations. As usual, his article is a good one.]
Mueller team disputes BuzzFeed report claiming Trump told Cohen to lie
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mueller-team-disputes-buzzfeed-report-claiming-trump-told-cohen-to-lie
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office on Friday issued an extraordinary statement disputing a bombshell news report that claimed President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie about the timing of discussions over a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow.
“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,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller’s office, said.
The statement is remarkable in that Mueller’s team rarely issues statements in response to news stories. But BuzzFeed’s story sparked immense interest from Democrats, who called for renewed investigations and even suggested the allegations could be a basis for impeachment proceedings.
Buzzfeed’s Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith tweeted after the release of the statement Friday: “In response to the statement tonight from the Special Counsel’s spokesman: 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 statement reiterated an earlier tweet from the Buzzfeed PR Twitter account, which said the publication “stands by this story 100%.”
I awoke this morning to the Buzzfeed news and was a little concerned.
Then I realized what I was falling into and gave it no more thought until the Mueller denial came out.
I feel somewhat vindicated for my unconcern.
After all, it was buzzardfeed reporting it.
I should hope they won’t survive this, but they will.
There’s a sucker born every minute.
Ed Bonderanka:
I was silently observing the 48-hour rule on it, and then Mueller came out with his statement after about 24 hours, so it was time to write something.
Mueller’s office lacks punctuation skills, or maybe it is whoever quoted Carr who lacks.
But what does one expect these days?
The anti-Trump mania is bad for the country. We conservatives hated Obama’s policies with a fervor, but we never tried to criminalize his politics or policies, and waited for the elections, which are the normal way in which to change our politicians.
We are now in banana republic territory. The worst part of it is that most of our citizens are uninformed or couldn’t care less. That’s the way republics die. Sad.
Joe Di Genova opined on Hannity tonight that Mueller issued a statement on the Buzzfeed story because in a few days Bill Barr will be the AG and Mueller knows Barr would be furious if he didn’t set the record straight. I hope Di Genova is right. Many have high hopes that Barr will start kicking a** and talking names. Let it be so.
“For those people who believe Trump’s guilty, they just know the evidence is there, and all they have to do is finally find it. They believe that some day that will happen.” – Neo
I knew some Rosicrucians once; this is an organization strongly based on the belief that absence of evidence for their contentions is proof that the evidence has been suppressed.
neo on January 18, 2019 at 9:40 pm at 9:40 pm said:
Roy Nathanson:
Yes, I know—I already drafted a post about it which I’m proofreading now.
So much news, so much fake news, hard to keep up.
* * *
I just assume that anything “important” that you don’t bring to our attention is probably fake, but sometimes it’s important to acknowlege what the hysterics are currently hystericking about.
If you just post a headline and the text “ignore this story,” I’m good with that.
Dershowitz: “The BuzzFeed reporter has now acknowledged that he himself has not seen the evidence, but he believes his sources are “rock solid.” ”
..so did Dan Rather.
Off topic: buying fast food for people must be a Republican thing…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/george-w-bush-delivers-pizza-to-secret-service-detail-working-through-shutdown
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/buzzfeed-faces-backlash-over-special-counsel-rebuke-of-bombshell-trump-report
“BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith responded to the statement from the special counsel, tweeting this: “We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he’s disputing.”
[obviously fishing for something they can claim to be true in their report]
…
There has been a strong reaction from journalists and media watchdogs. CNN’s crime and justice reporter, Shimon Prokupecz, for instance, stressed that no one should “underestimate” the special counsel’s statement.
“I’m sure it pained them to do this. I’m sure it went through many levels at the DOJ and FBI. They don’t talk. This is massive,” Prokpecz tweeted.
[when you’ve lost CNN…]
…
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow, whose work has been a key element of the #MeToo movement, weighed in on BuzzFeed’s disputed report, telling his Twitter followers that he himself declined to run with elements of what he described as a “narrative.”
“I can’t speak to BuzzFeed’s sourcing, but, for what it’s worth, I declined to run with parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind,” Farrow said.
[When you’ve lost Ronan Farrow…]
…
Offering bigger-picture context, Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor told Fox News that “no one hurts journalism more than journalists” and President Trump “scores big” when the media runs with inaccurate reporting.”
–30–
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/01/18/nolte-nine-reasons-to-be-skeptical-of-buzzfeeds-cohen-report/#comment-4292582452
Nolte is a bit less restrained with his 9 reasons than Dershowitz with his 4, but this one is interesting, as is a commenter’s further remark.
“So BuzzFeed’s two deep state law enforcement sources allege there is evidence proving Trump suborned perjury — texts, emails, documents, transcripts with other witnesses within the Trump organization — but Buzzfeed’s sources didn’t bother to back up this wild claim by showing these reporters any of this?
All this proof in the form of emails and texts and no one bothers to– oh, wait…
Uhm, Trump Doesn’t Use Email or Texts
Trump is famous for refusing to use texts and emails. So how can the smoking guns be texts and emails?
See how none of this makes sense…
A guy who has spent his life avoiding putting anything down in writing would break that rule to obstruct justice, to commit a felony?
Other than texts and emails from Trump himself, whose texts or emails would corroborate such a thing?”
denverdave3 Take Back Our Media • 11 hours ago
REASON 10: Cohen is known to have recorded his conversations with Trump, yet the accusation mentions everything except a recording. If there is no actual recording, it’s one of those things we call a lie.
All one needed to read to know Buzzfeed’s story was crap was Cohen’s plea on the lying to Congress charge. At no point in that plea did Cohen explain that he lied because he was told to lie, which would have been a part of the plea if the Buzzfeed story were true. He said he lied to align his testimony with public, political messaging. That messaging, put out by the Trump Campaign and Administration claimed that Trump had stopped actively trying to open such a business in Moscow at some point in early 2016. Cohen has, more or less, confirmed that part of the messaging- it appears that only Cohen was still pursuing the matter on his own initiative, and even he stopped at the point Trump became the nominee.
So, I knew the story was bullsh*t as soon as I saw it, and even if I hadn’t had the plea agreement to read, I would have not believed it because the matter being lied about was so damned trivial that no one would suborn perjury to stop it being made public.
Don Jr testified on this matter already. The left and the NeverTrumpers are getting desperate.
Podhoritz bit hard on this hook.
It’s not just the collusion. It’s the conspiracy.
On Thursday evening, BuzzFeed News dropped a bombshell, reporting that President Donald Trump told Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney, to lie to Congress about the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a real-estate project in Moscow during the 2016 election, a period in which the Russian government was seeking to aid Trump’s presidential campaign.
What a shame.
Podhoritz bit hard on this hook.
What seems (more than anything else) to motivate the residue of NeverTrumpers is defending what they said the day before, at which point they were defending what they said the day before that. Well, that and their disgust that anyone would attempt to enforce the immigration laws. Near criminal conduct by the Democratic Party and the permanent government doesn’t interest them.
“For those people who believe Kavanaugh is a rapist, they just know the evidence is there, and all they have to do is finally find it. They believe that some day that will happen.”
There; fixed it for you.
By the way “those people” are the same people in both instances.
When I see something sourced to “law enforcement sources,” I try to imagine what that might be designed to hide. Especially in the case of Buzzfeed, and especially when neither of their reporters saw any documentary evidence.
Law enforcement sources: two guards who stand outside the building where Mueller’s team is working? Two traffic cops who were part of Mueller’s escort?
You get the idea — this kind of sourcing tries to imply that someone sitting around the table with Mueller spilled the beans, when in reality it is likely someone who is very peripheral.
The point has been made….the President instructed his lawyer to lie under oath to the congress. That is all that matters.
The release of the retraction from Muller’s office was completely self serving. They had to release as the facts would have eventually come out and they had to get on top of it lest they look bad. But they let the speculation percolate for almost twenty four hours before issuing the denial on a late Friday afternoon thus projecting they image they are on the side of the angles while doing maximum damage to the President.
By Monday morning a whole new crisis will be in the forefront – perhaps it will be reported that due to the government shutdown Melania took the initiative to make the President a ham sandwich and the seven will go ape – and this incident will be nowhere to be seen.
But I guarantee that three weeks from now if asked the average person of democrat persuasion will assure you that the President ordered his lawyer to lie to congress under oath and is thus beyond evil.
Another thing that I find interesting is Amy Klobugar’s extensive grilling of William Barr on “obstruction of justice”. It almost seemed like she was trying to set him up to be forced to turn on the President when this story broke. Did she know what was coming and was part of the plot?
I surely do not want to come across as a nut who believes in conspiracy’s that have wheels within wheels but I am beginning to believe that there are wheels within wheels.
When I see something sourced to “law enforcement sources,”
There is a great scene in the movie, “Absence of Malice” where the reporter, Sally Fields, and her editor are trying to come up with a term for an unknown source.
The movie, one of my favorites, was made in 1981 and this Roger Ebert review tells us how much has changed since then.
Would real investigative reporters actually commit Field’s mistakes, improprieties, misjudgments, indiscretions, and ethical lapses? Generally speaking, no, they wouldn’t. And if they did, they shouldn’t have. And furthermore, their editors would never let them get away with it. (The unbelievable laxity of the editors in “Absence of Malice” creates the movie’s greatest credibility gap.)
Roger was a leftie but those days were another world.
Mike K,
That piece you linked to at The Atlantic was written by Adam Serwer, not John Podhoretz. And Serwer’s always been a leftist, as far as I know.
Would real investigative reporters actually commit Field’s mistakes, improprieties, misjudgments, indiscretions, and ethical lapses?
See the period critiques of Seymour Hersch by Martin Peretz and Michael Ledeen, as well as the book reviewer for Time. See the critiques by Garry Wills a half-generation later.
James Bowman pointed out about 15 years ago that people who write exposes for a living – and that includes ‘investigative reporters’ – are properly viewed with skepticism for structural reasons. They took an advance. If there is no scandal, they’ve got no book.
I surely do not want to come across as a nut who believes in conspiracy’s that have wheels within wheels but I am beginning to believe that there are wheels within wheels.
I’m wagering the general run of reporters have favored the Democratic Party since about 1935 and the general run of editors since about 1960. In the national press corps, the margins by 1992 were about 8 to 1. However, the media wasn’t a n extension of the Democratic Party and the media could pay the salaries and offer the working opportunities to recruit creamier talent than they can today. See Brent Bozell’s old newsletters. As recently as 1998, the print media was given to reporting quite inconvenient to the Clinton Administration. (Bozell was of the view that the broadcast media were extensions of the White House press office).