Its assertion was stunning: that President Trump had directed his fixer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress in 2017 about negotiations the previous year to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. And that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III possessed documentation of this; and further, that Cohen had acknowledged those instructions in interviews with Mueller’s office. Cohen said both in writing and in spoken testimony that Trump told him — in informal code that they both understood — to lie. Smith told me that he wishes that Mueller’s office had told BuzzFeed reporters about its concerns before publication, rather than announcing them to the world afterward. BuzzFeed’s overall reporting on the Moscow Tower project has been outstanding, and Smith is a visionary editor.

Source: Washington Post February 28, 2019 14:42 UTC