Tactical Peek
Tactical Peek's JournalInside the Mueller team's decision to dispute BuzzFeed's explosive story on Trump and Cohen
Source: Washington Post
Inside the Mueller teams decision to dispute BuzzFeeds explosive story on Trump and Cohen
By Matt Zapotosky and
Devlin Barrett
January 19 at 7:25 PM
When a BuzzFeed reporter first sought comment on the news outlets explosive report that President Trump had directed his lawyer to lie to Congress, the spokesman for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III treated the request as he would almost any other story.
The reporter informed Muellers spokesman, Peter Carr, that he and a colleague had a story coming stating that Michael Cohen was directed by President Trump himself to lie to Congress about his negotiations related to the Trump Moscow project, according to copies of their emails provided by a BuzzFeed spokesman. Importantly, the reporter made no reference to the special counsels office specifically or evidence that Muellers investigators had uncovered.
Well decline to comment, Carr responded, a familiar refrain for those in the media who cover Muellers work.
The innocuous exchange belied the chaos it would produce. When BuzzFeed published the story hours later, it far exceeded Carrs initial impression, people familiar with the matter said, in that the reporting alleged that Cohen, Trumps former lawyer and self-described fixer, told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie, and that Muellers office learned of the directive through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.
In the view of the special counsels office, that was wrong, two people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. And with Democrats raising the specter of investigation and impeachment, Muellers team started discussing a step they had never before taken: publicly disputing reporting on evidence in their ongoing investigation.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-the-mueller-teams-decision-to-dispute-buzzfeeds-explosive-story-on-trump-and-cohen/2019/01/19/d89dba5b-fa0f-445b-9fd3-72f0e911e28d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c92901ce8866
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on The Rachel Maddow Show 1/8
Fucking inspirational
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