clear what he s disputing. short time ago, ben smith spoke to our colleague, chris hayes. we went to them 24 hours ago and, you know, they declined to comment on it. obviously the special counsel prefers to control the time line and for reasonable reasons wants to operate on his own time line and without revealing a lot of detail. smith also told rachel maddow that buzzfeed sources continue to stand by their information. rudy giuliani also weighed in tonight sending this message on twitter. quote, i commend bob mueller s office for correcting the buzzfeed false story that president trump encouraged cohen to lie. i ask the press to take heed that their hysterical desire to destroy this president has gone too far. they pursued this without critical analysis. all day he used the hashtag #fakenews. remember it was buzzfeed that released the totally discredited
we don t know yet. it certainly puts the story in a gray area. the facts are in gray. we ll eventually find out whether or not trump directed cohen to lie is a fact or not. but right now it s in a gray area and trump is acting like it s a definitive thing. he s cheering on the special counsel. what will that look like if down the line the special counsel comes out with evidence that is not to his liking? he is propping this up as a way to shoot down another enemy. in previous times he s called the special counsel like 13 angry democrats. he s acting like he s exonerated. he s exonerated maybe in this news cycle, but it does feed into the it hurts journalists for him to be able to say fake news and for there to be solid ground making that claim tonight. right and on that front, i think we were looking all day. i think the question last night when this story on buzzfeed
was collusion. think about how much their argument has changed. it went from there were no contacts with russians to there was no collusion with russians to we tried to collude, to collusion is not a crime. if it goes on, rudy s going to say it s not jail, it s a gated community. isn t a crime. if this keeps going rudy will be telling trump it s not jail, it s a gated community. seth meyers gets tonight s last word. the 11th hour starts right now. tonight, a rare public statement from the special counsel pushing back on last night s explosive buzzfeed news report. robert mueller s office says references to evidence of the president ordering people to lie to congress are not accurate. plus, the government shutdown heads into a fifth week with more drama but little progress between democrats and this administration. why the gop seems to be staying on the sidelines. hundreds of thousands of federal workers still in limbo.
implication, you kept hearing if this is true, if this is true quickly followed by discussion of impeachment. given that as a possible factor in the special counsel s office breaking its silence and given that buzzfeed is not backing down from this story and is, in fact, challenging the special counsel s office to reveal more, do you think it s possible we will hear more from mueller s office or will this be it? i don t think they ll say anything else on the record. i think what you ll see is probably them talking to other reporters on background and knocking down the original buzzfeed story, something they could have done yesterday. you saw in that clip from ben smith, they contacted the special counsel s office, they didn t comment. oftentimes people at the justice department will tell reporters if they call you with a story that s not right, the justice department spokesman will tell those reporters on background before they publish this is wrong. you really don t want to get this
from cohen on the status of the project. buzzfeed also said that according to its sources, quote, the special counsel s office learned about trump s directive for cohen to lie to congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the trump organization and internal company e-mails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. earlier today trump lawyer rudy giuliani pushed back on the buzzfeed story. tonight, the special counsel s office made a very rare move of issuing a public statement. it reads, quote, buzzfeed s description of specific statements to the special counsel s office and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding michael cohen s congressional testimony are not accurate. buzzfeed s editor in chief responded with this statement, quote, in response to the special counsel s spokesman, we stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the special counsel to make clear what he s disputing.