[smt88]

Genuinely curious what exactly you're referring to? I remember them publishing the Steele dossier, which had both truth and lies in it, but they added a strong caveat that they weren't able to verify the contents.

How is that different from what WikiLeaks did (with regards to NSA spying and the Manning leaks) that HN praises them for?

[Fellshard]

Mostly recalling some of the claims and allegations they pushed during the Kavanaugh debacle, which were very quickly destroyed even by other publications carrying more serious allegations.

[jessant]

They published a report that alleged Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to congress. Mueller had to break silence to issue a denial about this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/business/media/buzzfeed-n...

[jacobolus]

The Mueller team (under inappropriate explicit pressure from the White House / DOJ) made a denial presumably because they wanted to be as careful as possible to preserve Michael Cohen’s and their own credibility for possible trial/etc., to avoid any impression they hadn’t dotted every i, and perhaps in part to appease the White House.

Any “inaccuracy” in Buzzfeed’s reporting was more or less based on a semantic dispute. Under a narrow definition, Trump didn’t “direct” Cohen to lie to Congress, he just suggested it using mob-boss-type language and coordinated the lying testimony through his other lawyers, and his longtime fixer Cohen knew how to read between the lines.

Immediately after Cohen’s lying testimony, one of Trump’s lawyers then called Cohen to congratulate him and tell him Trump was happy with his performance.

Buzzfeed stood (and still stands) behind their story, and the Mueller report and Cohen trial materials largely corroborate their reporting.

However, the Mueller team concluded that there is not enough direct evidence to e.g. indict Trump for suborning perjury in this case.

* * *

The people still selling the story that Buzzfeed completely screwed up and had their facts wrong are (hopefully unwittingly) peddling the same kind of disinformation that the article currently under discussion is talking about. There are some wealthy and powerful people trying to push this message down to further their own antisocial agendas for personal benefit.

[jariel]

"made a denial presumably because they wanted to be as careful as possible to preserve Michael Cohen’s and their own credibility"

I'm exceedingly doubtful that Mueller et. al. would make statements that were misrepresentative or lacking in credibility.

[jacobolus]

Huh? I said their goal was to maintain their own credibility: they didn’t want the general public to misconstrue the Buzzfeed News article’s use of the word “direct” to indicate that the president explicitly said words like “Mr. Cohen please go lie to Congress” or some similar completely clear statement suborning perjury, which they didn’t find evidence of. The President’s desire was conveyed via implication rather than as a direct order, and coordination about the finer details was done through his other lawyers rather than personally communicated.

But when Buzzfeed asked several outside legal experts (not Mueller’s team), they supported the article’s use of the word “direct” to describe the President’s communications with Cohen. The way Buzzfeed’s critics have attacked them for this story is largely disingenuous, especially after the first few months, when additional evidence came to light largely corroborating Buzzfeed’s reporting.

As I said, this is a semantic dispute about the meaning of the word “direct”. There is plenty of available evidence that the President wanted Cohen to go make lying statements to Congress, and successfully (using his typical mob-boss-style language) communicated that desire to Cohen, and then followed up with congratulations about a job well done afterward.

But the Special Counsel’s office presumably wanted to avoid any possible confusion about the precise nature of available evidence that might undermine their credibility if taken up by e.g. right-wing media pundits.

[jariel]

You misread what I wrote.

I didn't say they were protecting their credibility or not.

I said they wouldn't say anything that lacked credibility.

I'm saying the Mueller team is not going to lie, whatever they are saying. They are careful and deliberate.

[jacobolus]

> I said they wouldn't say anything that lacked credibility.

Yes that was precisely my point: the Mueller team made a correction out of an abundance of “careful and deliberate” caution.

They did not want the public to misconstrue the Buzzfeed News article’s language that Trump had “directed” Cohen to lie to mean that the Special Counsel’s office had uncovered an explicit statement to that effect. The main thrust of Buzzfeed’s reporting is clearly correct, but Mueller’s office wanted no room for misinterpretation based on differing understandings of the word “direct”.

I don’t understand why you would say you were “exceedingly doubtful” only to repeat my same argument.

[creaghpatr]

Uh hello? https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/mueller-statement-bu...

This is a titanic error, any new scoop from them must be verified from other sources now for them to be taken seriously.

[smt88]

The original BuzzFeed News article[1] says that Cohen was telling their reporters what he told prosecutors. They did not report it as undisputed fact.

Is it not newsworthy if a major witness is repeating his testimony to a reporter? How would you prefer they reported it? If news orgs never published the comments of known liars, we'd have very little political news.

BuzzFeed News also backs up Cohen's claims with the transcript of his House testimony[2].

Mueller's office (per your link) was pretty unspecific about what part of Cohen's statements they thought were misleading.

1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/cohen-tr...

2. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6021026-Michael-Cohe...

[creaghpatr]

That's false. Cohen was not the source of the fraudulent claims, rather he was the subject:

"President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter."

[nl]

I think the comment you are replying to is awkwardly worded, or misunderstanding the sequence of events or something.

Nevertheless, the article they linked to adds weight to the idea that the Buzzfeed reporting was definitely not "fraudulent" (as you characterised it).

Notably this exchange:

“So we’ve identified two crimes that you say you believe Donald Trump in some way directed you to take the actions for which you have pled guilty?” asked Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Republican from Texas.

“No sir,” Cohen said. “Three.”

“Ok. What is the third?”

“The third one is the misstatement to Congress. Two for campaign finance violations and one for misrepresentation — well, for lying to Congress.”

Now it's true that Muller didn't find enough evidence to support that. But nevertheless, Cohen certainly believed it, and claimed it to congress, and what he claims mirrors what Buzzfeed reported.

If we are discussing the reliability of Buzzfeed - well they reported something that ended up being confirmed by the person they were reporting about. I think that makes them at least somewhat credible.

[dd36]

How is that bad? Cohen claimed and still claims that. He even did so under oath. Something to the effect of, “he says it without saying it but I knew what he meant.” Not really any other reason for Cohen to lie to Congress than to help Trump.

[creaghpatr]

This was the highest-profile fuck up by a news organization in 2019. They didn't merely publish propaganda or disinformation: they published fraudulent news of the highest consequence, so bad that the Special Counsel had to issue an emergency statement to prevent all hell from breaking loose.

[nl]

Buzzfeed later wrote an explanation of their reporting[1].

It's interesting - Buzzfeed's claim is:

The facts of Cohen’s lies and his interactions with Trump are, largely, now settled. Our sources — federal law enforcement officials — interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president “directed” Cohen to lie. We now know that Mueller did not.

The Mueller denial of the Buzzfeed reporting is very limited:

"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,” Robert Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, said.

This was prior the Mueller report being released.

We now know Mueller report says: "While working on the congressional statement, Cohen had extensive discussions with the President's personal counsel, who, according to Cohen, said that Cohen should not contradict the President" and "Cohen also discussed pardons with the President?s personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message, he would get a pardon or the President would do "something else" to make the investigation end.[2]

The dispute seems mostly around the term "directed", and if it was directly by Trump or by his legal team. Both Mueller and Buzzfeed's sources agree that Trump and his legal team knew in advance that Cohen's congressional testimony contained lies.

The Buzzfeed reporting was based on an official's notes that said “he was asked to lie by DJT/DJT Jr., lawyers.”

Politfact agrees it is open to interpretation.[3]

In any case, it seems calling it "fraudulent" is going too far. It seems like there is broad agreement that Trump didn't use the words "Please lie", but he did imply that is what he wanted and that Cohen would be rewarded if he did, and Trump's legal team approved the statements that they knew included lies.

I'm going to do a HN taboo here and talk about voting. I realise this is an emotive subject and people have their predefined views. I'd ask people not to just vote on if they like Buzzfeed or not, and if they support Trump or not and instead consider if any of the things here have information they didn't know before. I believe that the answer to misinformation is information and I've tried to gather as much relevant information as possible here, and present both sides in as clear way as possible.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bensmith/how-we-charact...

[2] Muller Report, part 3, page 134 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5955118-The-Mueller-... (Note that because of the weird pagination in this document you need to go to page 346 of this link to read part 3 page 134)

[3] https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2019/feb/28/di...