Tonight Buzzfeed News Today

Informed it and we urge the special counsel to make clear what hes disputing." thats where we are tonight. happy two years of the trump administration, right? this is how were celebrating the two-year jubilee in our country with this week-long celebration of absolutely terrifying neck-snapping news. were also in day 28 of a government shutdown. theres apparently not going to be a state of the union this year and the administration as of today is officially dropping sanctions on companies associa...

And then, again, this is all the same week. this is how we are leading up to the two-year anniversary of trump being sworn in all this same week. now "buzzfeed" news has been the source of an all-day furor today with their just volcanically explosive reporting that president trump personally instructed michael cohen to lie to congress about the trump tower moscow project and how how long negotiations went on and how involved trump and his family were. remember, michael cohen has pled guilty lyin...

Cohens own words when he pled guilty to lying about the trump tower moscow meeting. he said in federal court that day, i made these statements to be consistent with individual one, thats donald trumps political messaging, and out of loyalty to individual one, donald trump. he didnt say anything about being directed to make the statements. he said he was trying to be consistent with trumps messaging. so all that was good reason to question the story from the get-go. and i think when you get the s...

Again, that the president directed him to lie to congress to cover up at least some aspect of the trump tower moscow project. thats what the week has been like. now tonight just as we were getting on the air, after a day in which multiple members of congress described the "buzzfeed" report as if true, the most serious allegations against trump yet, if true definitely the grounds for impeachment. if true, an inflection point in the entire scandal surrounding this presidency from the outset. that ...

Starting late last night and continuing into now, we have been unpacking this story published by "buzzfeed" news, reporting that the president directed his attorney michael cohen to lie to congress about the trump tower moscow project and reporting that the special counsel learned this both from cohen but also from other witnesses and from other documents. then suddenly late tonight the special counsels office issued a statement disputing at least the part of the story that has to do with the sp...

Directly issued orders of that kind. note that the general thrust of cohen lying to congress in accordance with or to support and advance trumps agenda per cohens legal memo is not in dispute. the source disputed the further more specific idea that trump issued and memorialized repeated direct instructions. again, that being posted tonight by ronan farrow. saying basically he had access to, as he puts it, parts of the narrative that buzzfeed conveyed in their story and felt it was so strongly di...

The buzzfeed story. but i think in the main what you can glean from their december 7th sentencing memorandum is that the core of the buzzfeed story is accurate. >> in terms of that -- the way they are pushing back, i mean, we heard from ben smith, who is the editor at buzzfeed very early on in the show tonight plainly frustrated with trying to parse the special counsels statement. >> uh-huh. >> trying to understand what exactly was in dispute. i mean, what the statement says is that whats not ac...

If the news keeps going on at this rate and this jagged, of course, were all going to need neck braces to keep up with it. as the special counsels office tonight pushes back on buzzfeeds bombshell reporting that the president ordered his longtime personal lawyer to lie to congress. lying to congress is a felony to which his longtime personal lawyer has already pled guilty. as we are making our way through the impact of that statement and that reporting tonight, one of americas legendary investig...

Mueller then went through the trouble of bringing cohen back to court in federal court again and charging him for that false testimony while simultaneously telling the judge, hey, dont give him any extra time in jail for this. he really is helping us. hes being great. this is not worth one extra day in jail, okay, judge? when "buzzfeed" published this story late last night about cohens false testimony to congress, this bombshell story that lit up the news cycle all day today, the narrative of "b...

>> so if -- just to drill down on the importance of that, theyve got information from cohen that according to the special counsels office is corroborated by other evidence. >> thats right. >> and that is what they stated in conjunction or in support of cohens guilty plea to lying to congress about this matter. i will say one of the main questions, the most potent questions, i think, about this buzzfeed reporting today has been, well, if mueller has this evidence that cohen was directed to lie wh...