The “failing pile of garbage” Buzzfeed, who was the first to publish Christopher Steele’s bogus dossier, is out with the latest anti-Trump “bombshell” so scandalous that it’ll take an entire three days before the media forgets about it.
To quote the key claims from the piece, authored by Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold:
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.
Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.
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.
A number of issues are immediately apparent, including the facts that:
- All sources are anonymous – and that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. There are no documents provided either, we’re simply relying on two anonymous “federal law enforcement officials.”
- Trump allegedly asked Cohen to lie for him after Cohen had publicly turned on Trump. How would that make any sense?
- Trump’s Trump Tower project in Russia never materialized, and conducting business in Russia is not a crime.
- Michael Cohen claims to have lied for Trump in the past out of “blind loyalty,” not because he was directed to lie. Given Cohen’s indictments, if Trump actually did direct him to lie, it would be in his best interest to say as much.
And most importantly, the Special Counsel is disputing the report.
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://t.co/BEoMKiDypn pic.twitter.com/GWWfGtyhaE
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 19, 2019
Prior to the Mueller spokesperson disputing the report, there were plenty of other red flags journalists should’ve considered.
One of the Authors Has History of Bogus Reporting
The second “reporter” with a byline on Buzzfeed’s article, Jason Leopold, really ain’t all that great at his job. Here’s some reporting of his from 2006, in which he predicted that Karl Rove was just 24-hours away from being indicted on charges of perjury and lying to reporters:
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove. During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.
Would you believe that all of Leopold’s sources for his bogus story were anonymous too?
In 2002, the far-left Salon.com removed a story of Leopold’s, accusing him of plagiarism and claiming that he “distributed an account of events” that was “riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”
The Duo Hasn’t (Or Maybe Has!) Seen the Evidence
Appearing on CNN, Cormier admitted that he hadn’t actually seen the underlying evidence for his report. When asked by host Alisyn Camerota if he’d seen the evidence, Cornier replied that ““No, I’ve not seen it personally” but assured us that “the folks we have talked to — two officials we have spoken to are full, 100 percent read into that aspect of the Special Counsel’s investigation.” In other words, no he hasn’t seen the evidence, but people we don’t know the names of assured him that they’re not liars.
According to Leopold however, he actually has seen the evidence, telling MSNBC that “We have seen documents. We have been briefed on documents. We are very confident in our reporting.” If he’s speaking of a “we,” then he must be speaking of Cormier, who contradicted him.
In hindsight, it probably isn’t surprising that Buzzfeed, the website that has brought us such enlightening articles including (but not limited to) “23 Things You Need If You’re Obsessed With Llamas,” “12 Reasons Why Sam The Car With Eyebrows Should Be Your New Favorite Cat,” and “13 Awesome Celebrity #TBT Photos You Might Have Missed This Week” hasn’t been successful in pivoting towards being a respected news outlet.
I suppose we should stay tuned for when they report on the 10,000th “final nail” in Trump’s coffin.
