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2019.01.18

Bombshell Buzzfeed Article Charges Cohen Directed to Lie to Congress (UPDATED)

Says Cohen merely confirmed what Mueller already knew, but DOJ calls reporting 'inaccurate'


President Trump President Trump

Mainstream morning news is all abuzz this morning about a Buzzfeed article charging President Trump with having directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about his Moscow tower project.

Michael Cohen, in testimony to the Office of the Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, had previously stated that the Trump Tower Moscow project had ended in January, 2016 as an attempt to distance Trump from, and to limit, the FBI's Russia investigations.

The special counsel's office 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.

Buzzfeed is careful to note that this "is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia."

Predictably, the Buzzfeed article sent Democrats into an uproar, with some calling for an investigation, others grabbing their pitchforks and torches and calling for impeachment. 1 Others took to twitter: 2

Rep. Ted Lieu tweeting that Donald Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, and pointing out that the first article of impeachment of President Nixon was obstruction of justice

In a surprising move, the Justice Department this afternoon actually issued a statement on the Buzzfeed story, saying that there were unspecified inaccuracies in their report.3

UPDATE:
Subsequent Washington Post reporting claimed that the Special Counsel's office later sent Buzzfeed an excerpt from the transcript of Cohen's plea hearing, which showed that Cohen said that he made the misstatements to be consistent with [Trump's] political messaging and out of loyalty to [Trump] — it did not say that Trump told him to make those misstatements.

HOWEVER (emphasis mine):

Guy Petrillo, Cohen's attorney, wrote in a memo in advance of [Cohen's] sentencing, "We address the campaign finance and false statements allegations together because both arose from Michael's fierce loyalty to Client-1. In each case, the conduct was intended to benefit Client-1, in accordance with Client-1's directives." Client-1 refers to Trump. 4

The Washington Post article goes on to say that nowhere else in the memo could one find any direct statement that Trump had ordered Cohen to lie. Furthermore, the Justice Department did some homework based on the Buzzfeed article and was unable to find any testimony or other evidence to corroborate the report; this, WaPo explains, is partly why the Office of the Special Counsel decided to dispute the report.



personal statement

Humor posts aside, I only seek to understand the events I describe in these posts, and to form an opinion after considering the material I've gathered. I believe we need leaders in Washington to act in the best interest of the United States as a citizen nation of the world, and who represent the interests of the people they serve above the interests of party affiliation.