all those other felonies related to his finances. they d haul him back into court, make him plead guilty to the crime of lying oh congress. even though they wanted to make sure it would have no effect on cohen s ultimate fate. if the buzzfeed story were true that mueller s prosecutors had both evidence that cohen committed that crime and evidence trump directed him to commit that crime, it would make sense that they brought him back into court, because then the reason they would have brought him back into court is because they were laying the predicate with the courts, in fact, here on the record is cohen pleading guilty to lying to congress. that would then set them up basically so they could subsequently charge another person with directing cohen to commit that crime. you can t charge someone with suborning perjury unless you have established for the record that perjury, in fact, occurred, right? it has never made sense to me why mueller s prosecutors would hustle cohen back into c
we always use when discussing stories that aren t yet proven to be true. and that s the language that i used here repeatedly last night at this hour when buzzfeed reported that michael cohen has told special prosecutor robert mueller that president trump ordered him to lie under oath to congress. is michael cohen if this is proven true, guilty of lying to congress as a crime? is he guilty of perjury as a crime? is the president of the united states guilty of suborning perjury if this report is true? yes, yes and yes. and now 24 hours later, the breaking news of the night is that the special prosecutor s office is disputing buzzfeed s reporting, but we don t know exactly what the special prosecutor s office is disputing within that reporting. robert mueller s spokesperson issued a written statement saying 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
thing. she was echoing the sentiment from what we heard from giuliani. now in an extraordinary move, the special counsel spokesman is coming out and essentially saying that there is nothing to back up this buzzfeed report that the president directed michael cohen, his former attorney, to lie to congress and that there are trump organization documents to back it up. again as sarah pointed out, that is extremely rare for the special counsel to do. but also, this story from buzzfeed certainly caught a lot of attention because of the implications for possible impeachment. suborning perjury, that s what this raised. you heard lawmakers saying they want to get to the bottom of this, they want to investigate. during all of this, there was a strong pushback from here at the white house from officials saying that it s not true. now you have the special counsel statement. i m sure this is even though right to you no one is speaking out possiblecally here at the white house in response to the
the special counsel spokesman is coming out and essentially saying that there is nothing to back up this buzzfeed report that the president directed michael cohen, his former attorney, to lie to congress and that there are trump organization documents to back it up. that is extremely rare for the special counsel to do. this story from buzzfeed certainly caught a lot of attention because of the implications for possible impeachment. suborning perjury, that s what this raised. you heard lawmakers saying they want to get to the bottom of this, they want to investigate. there was a strong pushback from here at the white house from officials saying that it s not true. now you have the special counsel statement. i m sure this is even though no one is speaking out publically at the white house in response to the special counsel s statement, i think it will be safe to say that the president will be talking about
president s pursuit of a trump tower project in moscow. doug mckelway has more on the story. reporter: it is either one of the biggest blockbuster stories of recent history or one of the biggest journalistic blunders we ve seen in a long time, and it s looking more like the latter. the special counsel s office, which seldom goes on record, issued a remarkable statement last night that refuted a buzzfeed piece alleging president trump ordered his attorney, michael cohen, to lie to a congressional committee. that would be a crime. it s called suborning perjury. quote: the way that the buzzfeed storys framed, it came from two law enforcement people who at least suggested by the story possibly to be from mueller s own shop. and i think under those circumstances he thought for the