Michael Cohen’s Leaked Testimony Appears to Dispute BuzzFeed’s Trump Tower Report

Michael Cohen‘s leaked testimony sheds some light on how BuzzFeed News came to publish its controversial report that the special counsel had evidence President Donald Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

BuzzFeed’s explosive report, published last month, claimed that two law enforcement sources told the outlet investigators had evidence that Trump “directed” and “personally instructed” his former lawyer and fixer to lie to Congress about when plans for the project ended. Cohen, according to the report, confirmed this instruction to investigators.

Cohen originally testified before the Senate and House intelligence committees that the plans ended in January 2016. He was charged with lying to Congress after Mueller found team Trump continued working on the project through June 2016. The lie, according to Mueller, was an attempt to “minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1 [Trump] in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.”

So it would be a huge deal if Trump actually directed Cohen to lie about the project to Congress. But just hours after the BuzzFeed report dropped, Mueller’s office released a statement disputing it.

“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,” said a special counsel spokesman.

BuzzFeed stood by their report nonetheless. And now, thanks to Cohen’s written testimony released ahead of his House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, we may have some clarity.

In his opening statement, Cohen is specific: Trump never “directly” told him to lie to Congress, but in several ways “made clear” he wanted him to.

Here’s the relevant portion:

Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates.

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 business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.

Cohen noted Trump asked for updates on the project “at least a half-dozen times” between January 2016 and June 2016.

He also claimed Trump’s lawyers signed off on the lie: “Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers reviewed and edited
my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it.”

Cohen continued:

To be clear: Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.

And so I lied about it, too – because Mr. Trump had made clear to me, through his personal statements to me that we both knew were false and through his lies to the country, that he wanted me to lie. And he made it clear to me because his personal attorneys reviewed my statement before I gave it to Congress.

So while Cohen admits Trump never explicitly directed him to lie, his argument that Trump “made clear” he wanted him to lie relies on three tenets:

— Trump repeatedly telling Cohen, falsely, that there was no business in Russia
— Trump repeatedly lying in public about dealings in Russia
— Trump’s lawyers approving Cohen’s statement that included the lie about dealings in Russia

This can help clear up some of the confusion surrounding BuzzFeed’s report and the statement from Mueller’s office. The claimed that Mueller had evidence Trump “directed” and “personally instructed” Cohen to lie to Congress. That reporting very well could have been to be based on Cohen’s interpretation of what Trump wanted him to do.

Mueller could have evidence supporting Cohen’s belief that Trump wanted him to lie about the project, without concrete evidence that Trump explicitly directed Cohen to lie to Congress. BuzzFeed’s sources could have conflated the two. Or, an argument could be made that implicit encouragement from a boss to a subordinate is a directive.

UPDATE: BuzzFeed News spokesman Matt Mittenthal gave Mediaite a statement standing by the reporting:

“Michael Cohen’s public testimony reaffirms what he claimed in private to investigators, as we reported last month: President Trump directed him to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in the heat of the 2016 campaign.”