“I am rock solid.”
It’s not the first time a major media outlet has reported on documents without seeing them, but this one might have created the biggest potential for backfire. Buzzfeed’s huge scoop alleging that evidence existed of Donald Trump ordering Michael Cohen to commit perjury left “room for skepticism,” as I noted earlier. Surprisingly, CNN picked up that thread to drill Buzzfeed reporter Anthony Cormier on his sourcing — and on the credibility of his colleague Jason Leopold, who got another special-counsel scoop spectacularly wrong in 2006.
Cormier insisted that “I am rock solid” on this report, even though he hadn’t seen the source materials himself, Colby Hall notes for Mediaite:
“I am rock solid. My sourcing on this goes beyond the two that are on the record. This 100% happened,” @a_cormier_ says about his BuzzFeed report that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about proposed Moscow project. https://t.co/sF3XuqPfkq pic.twitter.com/BMCzhs904a
— New Day (@NewDay) January 18,2019
Cormier appeared on CNN’s New Day and revealed that he had not seen the evidence underlying his report.
Host Alisyn Camerota opened the interview by asking Cormier if he had seen the evidence to which Cormier replied: “Not 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.”
The two sources on which Cormier relied were part of the investigation into Trump’s real-estate projects in Russia prior to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, he tells Camerota.
