She has some critical thoughts on the much-discussed Buzzfeed story about Trump directing his attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, which she shares in About the Buzzfeed Scoop: It's Important, but It Oversells the Lying Part. Emptywheel 01/08/2019
The Buzzfeed piece is from Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project 01/17-18/2019.
The Special Counsel's office issued a cryptic statement on the story, as reported by Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker in Mueller disputes report that Trump directed lawyer to lie AOL/AP 01/189/2019. The headline may be a little misleading, though, because the story itself says, "The statement by Mueller’s office on Friday night doesn’t cite any specific errors."
Marcy adds this wrinkle:
I think Barr will be shitty on a range of issues (though he’s less of a bigot and homophobe than Jeff Sessions and the Big Dick Toilet Salesman). But there are many reasons to believe, from his testimony, that he won’t interfere with the Mueller investigation. The overhyped claims in this Buzzfeed story, however, are likely to make Trump newly aware of that fact, and could have negative and unnecessary consequences (and in that way, I worry the Buzzfeed story is like NYT’s two underreported stories about the aftermath of the Jim Comey firing, which both did significant damage that could have been avoided with more awareness of the rest of [the] Russian story and more context).
The Buzzfeed story is important for the concrete details it adds to a story we already knew — and these reporters deserve a ton of kudos for consistently leading on this part of the story. But it has unnecessarily overhyped the uniqueness of Trump’s role in these lies, in a way that could have detrimental effect on the country’s ability to actually obtain some kind of justice for those lies.
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