BuzzFeed broke a “bombshell” story Thursday that US President Donald Trump ordered his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about the extent of the Trump Tower Moscow deal. However, their sources are slim and one of the authors has a history of retracting stories after their claims don’t pan out.
The story published Thursday, titled “President Trump directed his attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project,” claims to offer indisputable proof that Trump not only tried to coordinate a deal on the project with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that he did so well after the time he began claiming on the campaign trail not to have business interests in Russia, and then directed Cohen to cover all of that up in his statements to Congress last year.
However, the evidence provided for these claims depends on a shoestring-thin line of sources, and the more questions people ask, the more authors Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier seem at risk of getting egg on their faces.
The centerpiece claim of the article is made “according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” However, when Cormier went on CNN Friday to talk about the story, he was forced to admit, “I’ve not seen it personally.” He then clarified that “the folks we have talked to, two officials we have spoken to, are fully, 100 percent read into that aspect of the special counsel’s investigation.”
It seems a flimsy basis to make such a damning claim as this, but bigger statements have been made on less. The real problem, though, came when Leopold told MSNBC the same day that “we have seen documents.”
Q for @a_cormier_ & @JasonLeopold: I see a (possible) discrepancy. Asked about evidence for your story, Anthony told CNN “I’ve not seen it personally.” Jason told MSNBC: “We have seen documents.” Did Jason misspeak, or is he referring to documents separate from this story? pic.twitter.com/ZtMlMoSgaI
Now again, perhaps there is a certain benefit of the doubt to be given, a certain leniency with how statements were worded — except that this isn’t the first time Leopold has had his sources questioned. His journalistic career is littered with retractions and false reporting.
In June 2006, Leopold falsely reported that senior George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove had been indicted, and in 2002 Salon was forced to retract a piece by Leopold, saying it couldn’t authenticate the article. Columbia Journalism Review called him a “serial fabulist.”
CNN’s Alisyn Camerota pressed the case about Cormier’s partner.
