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
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.
go back to first principles. look at what mueller team said in their sentencing memorandum regarding michael cohen and that charge of lying to congress. if you don t mind, i d like to read just one sentence to you. please. the information provided by cohen about the moscow project, in these proffer sessions, is consistent with and corroborated by other information obtained in the course of the special counsel office s investigation. that s mueller s own words, right. saying what cohen said about the moscow project, the lies to congress, others being involved, the fact that the mueller team has corroborating information in their possession comes right from mueller himself. i think that s what really matters here. so just to drill down on the importance of that, they ve got information from cohen that according to the special
serious time but he doesn t need extra. this lying to congress thing, we don t want him to be published any extra at all. and that has sort of stuck in my craw ever since. because why did mueller s team go to the trouble of hauling cohen back in court and charging him with that one extra thing? why go through the bother? i m not trying to minimize the seriousness of lying to congress. you should never do it. if you do, you should probably go to jail. in this case, it s not like congress even knew they d been lied to. did congress really have any reason to believe that trump tower moscow planning went through june 2016 instead of just through january 2016? and that was the kind of material lie they should be worried about from coheb s testimony? i mean, it would be one thing if congress knew it had been lied to. and they were very upset about it and therefore referred cohen for prosecution and that s why mueller brought this charge of
counsel s office is corroborated by other evidence. that s right. that is what they stated in conjunction or in support of cohen s guilty plea to lying to congress about this matter. i will say one of the main questions, the most potent questions i think about this buzz feed reporting today has been well, if mueller has this evidence that cohen was directed to lie when he lied to congress, why wasn t that charged or otherwise indicated in court that day in november when cohen was there pleading guilty to lying to congress. would you expect if the special counsel s office did have the kind of information that buzzfeed says they have, that somebody directed cohen to do this? would you expect that to have turned up in the charging documents that day in court when cohen pled? no, not necessarily. because you want to keep some of your powder dry. laying the predicate, as you said earlier, is precisely i think what the mueller team is