[Buzzfeed] President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress

good point. On the other hand, the almost-gleeful tone that CNN adopted while running the story virtually nonstop yesterday was just a bit too celebratory . . .

 

The BF article mentioned hard evidence that the SCO has in their possession. I am guessing that either there is no hard evidence or that it is in the possession of the SDNY. This might fall into the "suspect but can not prove" category fo the Mueller Report.

 

I guess my comment to that would be to underscore this back and forth Everyone has been having with the pushback of Trump world where it’s the constant debate and pushback of what is legal vs what is right.

We ALL know (whether admitted or not) that what Trump and co did was grotesque and should never be allowed in our leadership of governance much less the presidency. The guy and his mob are up to their eyeballs in Russia ties and lies to cover them up. It’s wrong and should be disqualifying to run the country. Everyone knows this but few will admit it on team Trump for various reasons.

So I think when actual clear cut black and white CRIMES are exposed it’s a revelatory moment for the media when the news breaks and yeah they will jump out of their seats when that happens because you finally see the fruit of bad behavior end up in something that everyone says they care about... the law.

As important as “the law” is, I think the general conversation and goalposts are just too heavily weighted to proof of actual crimes and not a general consensus of what is right and what is wrong.

How many thousands died because Bush and Cheney lied to start a war in Iraq? Was it technically illegal and an impeachable offense?? It sure wasn’t treated that way but a lot of people died because of it.

We have such a low low bar now for the presidency that we all see this complete nightmare and have to parse through DOJ handbook every day to find out if this horrid act is legal when we should be talking about if it’s just flat out wrong.

 

well, let's just say CNN and everyone else yesterday were all like

 

Close to the truth is not the truth. It is sloppy. Running stories without sources on record is also sloppy and lazy. Not everyone is Woodward and Bernstein and not every anonymous source is deep throat. Running a story like that with an anon source means you are betting your legitamacy on it. You better damn well be sure that source is someone reliable. And if this sort of thing happens, you should be willing to fall on your own sword. These idiots are not careful journalists and ran a story out of malice towards the President. I sincerely doubt they even had a real source with knowledge of the situation.

 

This is good.

1- Re-confirm that Mueller doesn't leak
2- Move folks (that ran away over the past few months) back to, let's Mueller do his job, and trust him - i.e. ain't no witch hunt

So, when Mueller's report is out (assuming no tampering, blockage, and he's able to complete the job), there is a better chance more people would accept it.

 

I understand that if one supports the "correct" politics then it's acceptable to use the word "r****ded" as an insult.

 

The thousands of lies that the POTUS has told since he got elected must keep you awake at night.

 

dude's got a point

 

That would be nice. It would eliminate 99% of all reporting, or maybe it would drive all Journalists to said stuff like "this means impeachment", or "this means jail time", or "this means" xyz. That would certainly help solve the issue with faux news.

 

Nice essay in the National Review today

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/buzzfeed-report-michael-cohen-mueller-investigation-secrecy/

Debunking BuzzFeed and the Wages of Investigative Secrecy
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
January 19, 2019 10:55 AM
It is long past time that the public was told exactly what the president is alleged to have done.

BuzzFeed published an explosive allegation that the president of the United States ordered his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Specifically, in a news story sourced to two anonymous law-enforcement officials said to be “involved in an investigation of the matter,” the site reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had learned, though multiple witnesses and documents, of President Trump’s alleged instruction to Cohen; subsequently, upon being confronted by prosecutors, Cohen had supposedly admitted that Trump gave the order.

As a rule, Mueller does not comment on press reports about his probe. Yet, in a highly unusual move Friday night, the prosecutor refuted the story by reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier. Through a spokesman, Mueller asserted:

Clearly, Mueller did the right thing. The reporting had triggered a frenzy of commentary by Trump critics that impeachment was imminent, and even many chagrined Trump supporters conceded that, if the report was true, the presidency was in grave peril. Had Mueller stood idly by, the administration, and thus the governance of the nation, would have been engulfed in a ruinous storm of suspicion. It is not the special counsel’s job to correct bad reporting, but it would have been irresponsible to stay mum in these circumstances if the story was false.

Nevertheless, this incident highlights how investigative secrecy has wrongly been given pride of place. In the Mueller probe, the desire of prosecutors to go about their business in stealth — to attempt to build a case on undisclosed crimes based on unknown evidence; to prevent witnesses from gaming their testimony and evidence from being tampered with — has been prioritized over the president’s ability to govern the country.

Even in the rare situation when they are actually necessary, special-prosecutor investigations against a president are bad for the country. When the president is the subject of a criminal investigation, when the specter of impeachment hovers, it wounds the executive branch. The political bleeding makes it difficult for the president to deal with Congress, foreign governments, and myriad challenges of governance. The administration finds it ever harder to recruit talented people for jobs in which we desperately need talented people — no worthy person wants to leave safe, professionally rewarding, and financially lucrative opportunities in the private sector to come serve the country if it may mean having to hire lawyers and go through the anxiety of investigations.

The president is not above the law. Consequently, we must tolerate these challenges when there is evidence of a president’s involvement in a serious crime. But that’s why we should be told exactly what the serious crime is and what evidence allegedly implicates the president.

We’re constantly told, however, that such information cannot be disclosed because it will compromise the integrity of the investigation. That is absurd, especially after over two years.

In most cases — those not involving the president of the United States — investigative secrecy will be the most critical concern. Usually, when a serious crime has been committed, vindicating the rule of law is the most significant public interest. Moreover, secrecy is required to protect the reputations of Americans who are presumed innocent and who, though actually innocent, would be tainted if they were known to be under law-enforcement scrutiny.

When the president is the subject of an investigation, however, the public-interest balance is different. Law-enforcement scrutiny of a duly elected president harms the capacity of the country to govern itself. Again, we must accept this fact and navigate through the fallout if there are strong indications that the president may have committed a serious crime. But that is why we need to understand exactly what the charges and evidence are: The public must be able to weigh whether the investigation is worth pursuing — whether there really is a serious crime, whether there is real evidence of the president’s guilt — in light of the harm that the probe necessarily does to the country.

In this instance involving Cohen’s false testimony to Congress (for which he pled guilty in November), an apparently incorrect story about the president’s complicity was damning — so much so that many Democrats and pundits had the president on the verge of being removed from office. The president was in a position of dealing with this profound political damage while trying to address a border-security emergency; a government shutdown; the status of American forces in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan; and various other vital matters.

If you don’t like Trump, of course your first impulse is to scoff, “Too damn bad for him.” But the point is: It is bad for America. It is not a question of whether we agree politically with the president; it is a matter of having a government that is capable of functioning, regardless of who is president. It is a matter of not undermining the republic unless we are certain there is a compelling reason to do so.

Special Counsel Mueller was thus right to shoot down the BuzzFeed report. Did he do it because he believed the story was damaging to the country? I’d like to think so. Unfortunately, there have been many sensational allegations that have not been shot down in the last two years, based on fabricated evidence and deceptively selective intelligence leaks. We still do not know for sure whether the president is the subject of a criminal investigation, the crimes alleged, and what if any evidence implicates him. That has gone on for a very long time.

To his credit, and notwithstanding the president’s unseemly “witch hunt” riffs, the special counsel has never said a word, or written a single sentence in the many charges he has filed, that hints at criminal culpability on the part of the president. But the specter of prosecution and impeachment has hovered every day.

As a result, I can’t conclude that the special counsel is especially worried about the damage that inaccurate and politically damaging reporting does to the Trump administration. Rather, the BuzzFeed story was different because Mueller’s own reputation was at stake. Because of the way the report was framed, many readers naturally believed Mueller’s own investigators were the source of the leaked — and apparently incorrect — allegations that Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress. Mueller thus corrected the story.

Of course, it is not the special counsel’s job to police the media. But he is in that position only because secrecy has been given too wide a berth in the probe. It is long past time that the public was told exactly what the president is alleged to have done, and how strong the evidence is that he has done it.

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review. @andrewcmccarthy
​

 

I get the sentiment but I think in the end the media’s one responsibility with running stories is does the public have a “need to know” basis. I do think the public needed to know about the intelligence collected in the Dossier we just might not have needed to see it in its raw intelligent form like we did where there is uninvestigated intelligence where it presents everything out there allowing the political opposition to use any inaccuracies to discredit everything.

I also think the public needed to know about the details regarding Trump Tower Moscow ... much of what was stated in Cohens guilty plea.

Did they need to let the public know that DOJ officials or prosecutors were saying Trump ordered false testimony .... I’m not entirely sure, but it deserved further journalistic corroboration and they should have shared their information with the Post at the very least who could have run this by their sources to ensure accuracy.

Same with the McClatchy Reports regarding Cohen. The fact that they aren’t sharing their information with other outlets to independently verify is a problem. The public has a right to know if Cohen was really in Prague or around that area of the world but those outlets need to not be so concerned with being the breaker of all news and share their evidence and sources to further verify this stuff.

Plus it’s very conceivable to think that Trumpers in the govt will give false information to reporters to purposefully get them to report easily debunkable information to help Trump see.... fake news.

 

So, it's 1st and Goal from the 5? I'll take that.

 

A more apt analogy would be that the refs have thrown a flag on the play, and while it is against the offense, the infraction could be anything from holding, to unsportsmanlike conduct, to something which may necessitate review and ultimately be overturned.

As it stands though, it looks like the ball will remain on the goal line. And Team Trump's DL weighs a collective buck fifty soaking wet.

 

you realize the analogy was about the media . . . not about Trump.

 

That's exactly how I understood it.

Impeachment odds peaked at around 70% and are back down to 50/50. I mean, I guess that's better than 70/30, but it seems like an odd time to celebrate if you're a Trumpy boi.

 

I would argue that the house impeaching Trump is all but certain even if they never find a valid reason.....however removal from office is holding steady at 0%

 

Not exactly a ground breaking prediction lol. No president has ever been impeached and removed.