[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.