Allies of President Donald Trump are out in full force Friday night, rubbing in the revelation from Special Counsel Robert Mueller that BuzzFeed’s once-thought-to-be-explosive story alleging ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen provided Mueller with evidence that the president instructed him to lie to Congress is false.
President Trump himself came out swinging, again calling fake news “the enemy of the people.”
Fake News is truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2019
And he bashed BuzzFeed for publishing the fake dossier about him during the transition after he won the election:
Remember it was Buzzfeed that released the totally discredited “Dossier,” paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats (as opposition research), on which the entire Russian probe is based! A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our Country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2019
Front and center cheering the demise of the BuzzFeed report was the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., who in a dozen or so tweets late Friday mocked the publication his father once called a “failing pile of garbage.”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! https://t.co/Guzf4R1WiI
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
You were saying??? https://t.co/jiFM78lYU4
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
Hey @BuzzFeedBen you getting the next draft of this one ready?
Getting It Wrong – POLITICO https://t.co/kri1uqOVb0
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel hit BuzzFeed and the rest of media hard too:
The entire premise of this story, which received wall-to-wall coverage, was based on “evidence” the reporters admitted they never even saw.
Who could’ve predicted that the publishers of the phony dossier would get this wrong, too?https://t.co/enaIVvSNPu
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) January 19, 2019
Trump, Jr., hammered BuzzFeed from every direction–and also hit the rest of the media for going along with BuzzFeed’s fake news:
If the media does not spend — minute for minute — the same amount of time on the death of the latest #FakeNews from @BuzzFeed (RIP) that they did speculating about “IF IT’S TRUE 😱!” then they should quit even pretending to be unbiased. What a disgrace. #RIPbuzzfeed
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
You were saying???
Please continue. I’m actually curious about your bullshit commentary for the first time ever.
How many stories like this are out there? How many retractions and apologies will there be? https://t.co/nUDFGpw2Fx
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
First Jim Acosta proves walls work. Now BuzzFeed (RIP) proves what a joke the coverage of the witch hunt has been. TDS sure does produce some strange symptoms. #RIPbuzzfeed #tds #TrumpDerangementSyndrome
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
I ask is that CNN gives equal time to the retraction…. (um obliteration you got hit with from Special Counsels Office) that you gave to the #fakenews part of the story you all so desperately wanted to be true.
Seems fair, right? https://t.co/zmYNakwUv5
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
And this right here is exactly what’s wrong with CNN and the rest of the #FakeNews media.
If you’re skeptical about the accuracy of a story, how about NOT giving it non-stop, wall to wall coverage on your network? You just can’t help yourselves!!! https://t.co/ouGZvIGvc0
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
You’d be much more credible if CNN’s two biggest bombshells about me had any merit at all. Your network ran with them with glee but they were both total crap!
1) The date of my @wikileaks info receipt
2) Lanny Davis admitting he was your source & was wrong (still not corrected) https://t.co/plcdAG6nnO
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
He’s 100% right… because they are!!! https://t.co/PJ8onWQVh1
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
You forgot CNN and Lanny Davis as a source saying I told DJT re meeting and then Lanny himself says he got it wrong and they wouldn’t even correct. Still haven’t. Their own source says it was wrong and they won’t fix. Give me a break. https://t.co/Hx5qKxnBPF
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
Trump, Jr., lit up the Democrats who latched onto the fake news report as well:
Hey Adam, turns out it was Full of Schiff! https://t.co/01saPi8aaW
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 19, 2019
But Trump, Jr., and President Trump were hardly alone:
Phrased differently, expect Buzzfeed’s reporting to demean the entire news media. https://t.co/oIgW3xsfd8
— David Martosko (@dmartosko) January 19, 2019
This is just the most egregious example of the rampant unfairness that has tainted this partisan witch-hunt from the beginning. The utter hatred for @realDonaldTrump has empowered a legion of back stabbers wielding flamboyant falsehoods to undermine @POTUS.
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) January 19, 2019
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin on BuzzFeed: “People are going to take from this story is that the news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they’re willing to lie to do it…I just think this is a bad day for us” pic.twitter.com/HSseZ1I9Xz
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 19, 2019
Update?! Shouldn’t this be a retraction and an apology?! Completely unacceptable that something false drove the entire news cycle for a day! https://t.co/pXTMfNuKlH
— Sergio Gor (@SergioGor) January 19, 2019
Uhh, you gonna update this @RepAdamSchiff? pic.twitter.com/RZTmiNz72B
— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) January 19, 2019
Reckless. And from a sitting US Senator. https://t.co/zASvnCgxws
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) January 19, 2019
I told you all that the BuzzFeed story was nonsense. pic.twitter.com/gbTXPjpVtk
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) January 19, 2019
RIP Buzzfeed #FakeNews https://t.co/bQ8xUxO4z6
— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) January 19, 2019
I can hear the victory laps over on Don Jr’s twitter feed from here in DC. #RIPbuzzfeed
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) January 19, 2019
The story, which others in media and Democrats pounced on to push the narrative that Trump could be impeached and removed from office, cites “two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter” claiming that “President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.”
The BuzzFeed report says this is the first of any evidence to emerge that implicates Trump himself directly, as no evidence has surfaced in nearly two years of investigations that connects Trump to any wrongdoing:
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.
This revelation is not the first evidence to suggest the president may have attempted to obstruct the FBI and special counsel investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
But, it turns out, this is entirely fake news and inaccurate. In response to the story, nearly a full day later, Mueller spokesman Peter Carr issued a rare statement rebuking BuzzFeed report as false.
“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,” Carr said on behalf of the Special Counsel’s Office.
Mueller’s office hardly ever issues any public statements, and almost never responds publicly to press inquiries other than toprovide court-ordered public releases of documents. So the decision to do so, and the impact of that decision, is particularly embarrassing for BuzzFeed. Incredulously, BuzzFeed is still standing by its story–despite the fact that Mueller nuked it.
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.
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) January 19, 2019
But, in the wake of BuzzFeed’s effort to parse the statement from the Special Counsel’s office to somehow mean that its entire report is not being challenged, more reports have come out demonstrating that the Special Counsel’s statement is meant to challenge every bit of the BuzzFeed story:
BuzzFeed’s hole gets deeper: “Mueller’s denial, according to people familiar with the matter, aims to make clear that *none of those statements in the story* are accurate.” https://t.co/1ZjbLVWNp0
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) January 19, 2019
NYT: “One person familiar with Mr. Cohen’s testimony to the special counsel’s prosecutors said that Mr. Cohen did not state that the president had pressured him to lie to Congress.” https://t.co/dioxTf437V
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) January 19, 2019
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/TNmcfV4bL9Y/