Those people are seizing onto Cohen’s use of the word “directly.” The President didn’t “directly tell me to lie.” That’s an adverb that characterizes the underlying instruction to lie. So, that’s your answer for that question? You don’t feel like you can go beyond that?ĭo you think him saying “He did not directly tell me to lie” contradicts at all you writing that this was “the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie?” Was incorrect or dishonest? You know, I cannot talk about any of the evidence, documents, or anything that I have that may relate to any stories that I will be working on in the future. My conversation with Leopold, which has been edited for length and clarity, is below.ĭo you have any evidence that what Michael Cohen said to Congress this week was incorrect or dishonest? (Leopold was open about past substance abuse and mental health issues in a 2006 memoir, “ News Junkie.”) His work with Cormier on the Trump Tower Moscow project has advanced that story significantly, despite the controversy surrounding it. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, had been indicted in the investigation into the outing of the C.I.A. Four years later, he incorrectly reported that Karl Rove, George W. In 2002, Salon removed an article from its Web site after Leopold was accused of inaccuracy and plagiarism. He has also been the subject of controversy. Leopold, who was previously at Vice News, is considered an expert at using Freedom of Information Act requests and was part of a team of BuzzFeed reporters who were Pulitzer Prize finalists in 2018. I recently spoke by phone with Leopold about his reporting of this story and his other work on the Trump-Russia affair. Trump’s personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it.” At the same time, Cohen confirmed other aspects of BuzzFeed’s reporting, including that he briefed Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump on the deal, and that, as BuzzFeed wrote, “attorneys close to the administration helped Cohen prepare his testimony and draft his statement to the Senate panel.” On Wednesday, Cohen said that “Mr. In his way, he was telling me to lie.” The strong language that BuzzFeed used-which described Cohen’s earlier testimony as “the first known example of Trump telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia”-appeared to conflict with Cohen’s account. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no Russian business and then go on to lie to the American people by saying the same thing. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. In his opening statement, Cohen claimed that “Mr.
This controversy, and the underlying question of whether Trump had directed Cohen to lie, were two of the many reasons that people were anxious to hear Cohen’s public testimony on Wednesday to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Mueller’s office released a rare public statement, saying that “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.” BuzzFeed, and its editor, Ben Smith, have stood by the story. Under the headline “President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen to Lie About the Moscow Tower Project,” the article, written by the BuzzFeed News senior investigative reporter Jason Leopold and his colleague Anthony Cormier, said that the President had personally instructed Cohen to lie to Congress about when negotiations on the project ended, and that the office of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, had 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.” The story was sourced to “two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” However, once it was published, other federal officials spoke up. In January, BuzzFeed published perhaps the clearest accusation against President Trump in all of the reporting about the Russia investigation.