One day after U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr publicly released a redacted version of the Mueller report, which concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election, Buzzfeed is finally admitting its earlier reporting that Trump had “directed” his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about a building project in Moscow was...well, complete crap.
First reported in January, Buzzfeed's “bombshell” story was fawned over by the liberal media…for about 24 hours. Shortly after Buzzfeed published the damning accusations, the Mueller team, in a rare break from their historically stoic silence, stated that Buzzfeed’s report was totally false.
The publication stood behind their reporting, though – until Friday, when the outlet published a “note” at the top of its original report admitting that its earlier report was factually wrong.
“The series of interactions between Trump, Cohen, and their lawyers did not, in the prosecutors’ view, amount to Trump ‘directing’ Cohen to lie,” Buzzfeed Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith wrote in the carefully worded update. “As a matter of what constitutes a crime, Mueller has the last word, and his characterization has the force of law.”
“Two weeks ago, Cohen’s attorneys sent a lengthy memo to lawmakers, including more than 100 pages of documentation, that stated Cohen’s false testimony was based on ‘Trump and associates’ overall and intense effort to persuade Cohen to commit crime of lying to congress,’” Smith went on.
“Our sources — federal law enforcement officials — interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president ‘directed’ Cohen to lie,” he continued. “We now know that Mueller did not.”
It is, in essence, a total admission that Buzzfeed ran with a story they presented as “fact,” only to later admit, as we all already knew, that it was totally and completely false.
But when it comes to reporting actual facts over rumors and “bombshell” allegations, better late than never….right?
Eh, not really.