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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...