on companies associated with the russian oligarch who was sanctioned for election interference. how is your family celebrating the anniversary? because that s what we re doing as a country. the editor in chief at buzz feed has put out his own statement responding to the special counsel after the special counsel put out a rare statement disputing the reporting from buzz feed today. we re joined now by ben smith, the editor and chief of buzz feed news. i know it s short notice. sorry i couldn t make it in person. that s okay. let me know first and after ways the status right now of reporting this out in your shop and the response you guys are trying to assemble in terms of what the special counsel s office has said tonight? we re obviously continuing to face the story as we have been for two years. and, you know, right now trying to understand the special what this special what the
descriptions, the characterizations, sort of is a window into the thinking of the mueller team. there are parts of the reporting that trouble them. i have no idea, rachel, by the way, why they decided on this occasion to push back on the story. i m sure there are other stories that got other things wrong. but, again, in the main, i come back to this point. it seems to me that the core of the story is correct and we can determine that from the mueller team s own court filing. that s really the best place to look i think. all the time. for what s really going on in this case. chuck rosenberg, form aer eastern district. clarion voice as always. much appreciated. thank you, my pleasure. we re following this extraordinary turn in this reporting. the famously silent special counsel s office speaking tonight, pushing back on the buzzfeed report but in a very narrow way. you re about as likely to get a
office itself. that s why it was so carefully worded. it was talking about what buzzfeed said about what the special counsel had accumulated. but all that said, i just want to make one point. the unfortunate thing about a story like this is, it distracts from what we do know and what is real and what is significant. and that s what cohen pled to in the first place. he was the personal lawyer for donald trump. he was in direct communication during the presidential campaign with a kremlin official about securing land and financing for a deal that could allow the president the then candidate to make hundreds of millions of dollars. that was a conflict of interest. that was significant in and of itself. michael, let me ask you about what you just said about cohen s statement when he pled guilty about lying to congress on this. as you point out, and i m so glad you brought this up. he said, i lied to congress about the trump tower moscow
investigation in which peter carr has spoken on the record to a reporter about what s going on in the investigation. the first one was april of last year. mcclatchy had published a story saying the mueller team had evidence that cohen had in fact traveled to prague, which would appear to buttress an accusation in the christopher steele dossier that he had gone to prague to meet with russians about the interference. mcclatchy published this piece saying mummer had evidence it did happen. after that report, we got a very at that point i think unprecedented statement from the spokesman for the special counsel. not directly disputing the story but giving a sort of general warning to the president ths th had been inaccuracies out there and every journalist should be careful about their sources. be very cautious about any source that claims to have knowledge of our investigation and dig deep into what they claim before reporting on it.
special counsel is actually saying in his statement. which is obviously disputing some element of the story but very difficult to understand which one. have you had interaction with the special counsel s office about this specific story prior to getting the state tonight from peter carr? i personally haven t but obviously the reporters they declined to comment but did sent over bits of michael cohen s test money. then 24 hours released. we have, you know, we describe our sources here as federal law enforcement officials involved in the investigation of the matter of the trump tower moscow. and we re not playing games with that characterization. these are strong sources close to the investigation. involved in the investigation. who told us it was accurate and stood by it. so let me just i m just not actually i heard what you said in terms of contact with the special counsel s office ahead of publication, your reports contacted the special