Mueller's Office Disputes Buzzfeed Report That Trump Directed Michael Cohen to Lie to Congress

Special counsel Robert Mueller's office disputed an explosive story from BuzzFeed News as "not accurate" Friday night, after the news outlet reported the President had directed his personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, for which Cohen was later prosecuted.

"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 Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller's office, in a statement.

It's highly unusual for the special counsel's office to provide a statement to the media -- outside of court filings and judicial hearings -- about any of its ongoing investigative activities.

In response, BuzzFeed said in its own statement, "We are continuing to report and determine what the special counsel is disputing. We remain confident in the accuracy of our report."

Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief at Buzzfeed, echoed similar sentiments.

"We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he's disputing," he tweeted.

But following the story's publication late Thursday night, Democratic members of Congress began pointing to the report as grounds for the President's impeachment. The clamor grew throughout the day and into Friday night.

The BuzzFeed story, by reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, asserted that Cohen had told special counsel investigators that "after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations [for a Trump development project in Moscow] ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump's involvement," BuzzFeed wrote, attributing its assertion to two law enforcement sources.

The sources also said the special counsel's office had corroborating Trump company emails, text messages and other documents, though the BuzzFeed reporters were unclear Friday in television interviews about whether they had seen the documents described in their story.

The special counsel's office did not go into detail about which parts of the BuzzFeed story they were calling untrue. The BuzzFeed story made several other claims that remain uncorroborated by other media outlets regarding Cohen's lies to Congress and communications with Mueller.

The White House and the President's personal lawyers pushed back on the story throughout the day Friday.

Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani praised Mueller for issuing the disputing statement, and accused the press of showing bias against Trump in its coverage of the BuzzFeed report.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/mueller-statement-buzzfeed/index.html

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