Today this is cnn tonight, im don lemon, here is the breaking news, a rare and stunning move from the special counsel tonight. Robert muellers team disputing an explosive buzz feed report alleging the president told Michael Cohen to lie to congress. The special counsels office releasing a statement saying quote buzz feeds description of specif specifi specific statements and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by the office regarding Michael Cohens congressional testimony is not accurate. Buzz feed is standing by their reporting and urging the special counsel to make clear what he is disputing. Its one of many major developments in the Mueller Investigation this week so were devoting this entire hour to an indepth look at all things russia. Remember, this was the same week the president of the United States came out to publicly declare he is not an agent of russia. The same week the president s new attorney general nominee testified that he is good friends with the special counsel. The same week the president s attorney said he couldnt say whether or not anyone on the trump team colluded with russia. Only to have to walk it back. So theres a lot to get to. Were going to start with cnns sara murray. Good evening to you from washington. This is a big deal and a rare move for the special counsels office as i said, so take us through this because it is highly unusual for the special counsels office to provide a statement to the media in any way. It is a big deal. Theyre usually no comment on anything. They have put out a handful of statements, you know, that dont relate to actual indictments theyre announcing throughout the course of this investigation, you know, to give you a little bit of comparison, at one time last year, the New York Times asked the special counsel to clarify what one of the prosecutors was having at lunch at Paul Manaforts hearing, and the special counsel refused to answer questions about that or provide any statement for that, so thats how rarely they comment. The fact that they have put out this statement now that essentially says the evidence thats being described in this buzz feed story, that doesnt exist within our office. That kind of statement is unprecedented from the special counsel. Buzzfeed is standing by its reporters and story tonight. What else are they saying . They are standing by their reporters and story, and anyone can sympathize how you would not want to be in this position as a reporter. Ben smith, the editor in chief said he would like to get more information from the special counsels office about what exactly they take issue with. Heres how he described it. They are clearly referring to something and we hope they will tell us what they are referring to. I mean i think at this point, we would hope that they would clarify that. And he said his reporters are still working on this story, don, presumably going back to their sources trying to clarify some of this stuff. Well see if there are additional updates from buzzfeed on this. Are we hearing from the president s team on this . Gl we are hearing from the president s team. It shouldnt surprise you this is coming on twitter. Rudy giuliani had some kind words for bob mueller if you can believe the twilight zone. He said i commend bob muellers office for correcting the false story that President Trump encouraged cohen to lie. I asked 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, and i think you know from when we were covering this last night and today, one of the difficult things about this story is other news outlets, including cnn were not able to confirm the details of this, and cnn never independently corroborated this, and we saw Rudy Giuliani as well as others from the president s team say that was patently false, and now we have the special counsels team saying look this evidence as described in the buzzfeed story doesnt exist in the special counsels office. Sara murray. Thank you for that. Susan glasser and max boot, the author of why i left the right. Good evening to both of you. Max since i have you here with me, this is the first time you have been on cnn since this buzzfeed story broke. 24 hours later, mueller is disputing the story or at least disputing aspects or parts of the story. What are you thinking . Well, first reaction is its kind of ironic that President Trump after deriding bob mueller as the leader of a witch hunt and 12 angry democrats is now citing what bob mueller says, and i think thats a testmename to the fact that mueller does have credibility, he does have integrity, and this is not a witch hunt. He wants the facts out, even if theyre averse to trump, he in this case corrected the record because he did not want people to assume something that happened that he does not have evidence of. What is the correction about, its interesting to read the sentencing statement na Michael Cohen made on november 30th where he said that the false statement allegation and the Campaign Finance false statement, in each case, the conduct was intended to benefit client one, and this was the key part in accordance with client ones directives, so what Michael Cohen seemed to be saying there he did lie in accordance with Donald Trumps directives but he wasnt saying that donald trump personally told him to lie which was what the buzzfeed article was saying. My supposition is what muellers office is disputing that they dont have evidence that donald trump personally told Michael Cohen to lie. It sounds like there was coordination of the lie between Michael Cohen and Donald Trumps team so thats not quite as damming as what buzzfeed was reporting. That is still fairly damming because it suggests that donald trump and his team were still complicit in this lie, and they could have corrected the record when Michael Cohen lied to congress but they deliberately chose not to do that because they wanted to deceive the public and congress. Thats why they say aspects. It says buzzfeeds description of specific statements to the special counsels office in characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding cohens congressional testimony are not accurate. Thats from peter carr, the spokesperson for the special counsel. So you think if the entire thing, and we dont know here, if the entire thing, we just say this story is wrong, do you think that or this story is just completely inaccurate. The denial is a little bit opaque. Thats my interpretation based on what im able to piece together. I want to bring you in susan, buzzfeed standing by their reporting and their sources, give me your take away. Well, look, it is very serious allegation to have made and now to have that called into question by the special counsels office in this very unusual statement, you know, its very serious and were going to have to wait for the full results of the investigation to know. I agree with maxs parsing of the statement, although the second part of the special counsels statement also caught my eye because the buzzfeed report does mention that there was corroboration of cohens basically accusation that the president directed him to lie, and it does appear to me, at least, that the special counsels office is questioning whether or what kind of corroboration other documentary evidence that they have of this which i think is significant because as we have seen all along, trump would certainly prefer that it be his word against that of the rat, as hes called him who flipped against him rather than having other evidence in addition to Michael Cohen turning against him, but you know, i think its very important for everybody concerned that this be as factual as possible. Its not good for the credibility of journalism. Its not good, it wouldnt be good for the credibility of the special counsels office had they let something go unchallenged. I think max is right to point out the hypocrisy of President Trump and his lawyers to be praising a statement after doing an extraordinary Public Campaign over the last year the likes of which america has never seen to undermine the credibility of the special counsels office, its pretty rich to see the president and his lawyer touting the counsels Office Tonight because it did something that they approved of. You know, i mentioned max in the open what an extraordinary week this is, and weve had a lot of extraordinary weeks, but this one is just unbelievable. We started the week with the president having to say hes not a russian agent, were ending with the special counsel speaking out about a report that they find parts of inaccurate or maybe as a whole, i cant tell from this statement. But obviously its unprecedented that the special counsel would release this. What does this all mean for congress . Because they have been demanding answers for all of this. I think it means they have to investigate and parse the evidence and of course, you know, donald trump is going to jump up and down and claim this means that he has been vindicated and thats not the case at all. At most, this is striking down one particular allegation and all these other allegations are out there unrefuted including from Rudy Giuliani himself who was basically saying he wasnt going to deny that there was collusion on the part of the campaign or there was no denial of the fact that donald trump tried to cover up his meetings with Vladimir Putin from his own aides, there was no denial of the fact that Paul Manafort shared polling data with somebody who was linked to russian intelligence. I mean all these stories that come out that are highly damming of the president suggesting that there was collusion and of course we have also seen obstruction of justice occur in plain sight. All that stuff is still out there. I mean this one story may be and probably is wrong, but theres a lot of damming evidence out there which remains very valid and very unrefuted and, you know, i think what this also goes to show is you do have to be careful about news reporting but i think that in a way this actually vindicates the Mainstream Media because cnn and the New York Times and the washington post, the big outlets, nobody confirmed what buzzfeed was saying, and they all made clear this was unconfirmed but there are other stories that have been confirmed by these major outlets and i think they have stood up very well. Certainly better than what donald trump says, which is an average of 15 falsehoods a day. But the president and the critics of us and his supporters will cherry pick the sound bites and not put in caveat. This makes the media look bad, don, i dont deny that. Thats absolutely true, and they will run away with this, but if you parse it more carefully, you see that the Mainstream Media, maybe not buzzfeed but the major outlets are pretty careful about what they report. Stick around, we have a lot more to talk about. Like i said, this has been one really crazy week in russia news and what makes it even crazier, the shut down. Were going to talk about it next. An be trusted. I ask you if you want to save hundreds on car insurance. And youre like, yes thank you, mind babysitting my kids . Im like, of course ill sit with the kids. Youre like a brother to me. Geico. Com. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. My moderate to severe i ulcerative colitis. Ing but i realized something was missing. Me. The thought of my symptoms returning was keeping me from being there for the people and things i love most. 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Trump, putin and washingtons unbelievable new normal, regardless of whether trump ends up making a speech on capitol hill on january 29th, the state of the union is not strong, and everyone knows it. Two things here, i said so if he does the state of the union, what does he start out saying, this is an honest question, i dont mean to be snarky. Do you say the state of the union is shut down because thats really what it is. Are we really where we are, is what you say, its what a lot of people are thinking every single day when they see the headlines. Well, thats right, don. I mean, actually, that is a quote from a conversation i had the other day with nick burns who was the u. S. Ambassador to nato under george w. Bush, a Career Foreign Service guy. He was there after 9 11 when all of the member nations of nato declared for the first and only time in natos history the article 5 selfdefense in order to stand there with the United States. Its the reason that all these years later, nearly two decades later, nato allies, along with the United States are still in afghanistan. And so to have the president of the United States not only questioning american commitment to nato, but openly musing, that was another big story this week. You didnt list that one off. I understand why you didnt, but, you know, this is a domestic political crisis, right were shut down. Were weeks into the shut down with no end in sight. Our government is paralyzed. It doesnt work anymore. And it is also a global crisis. And that often tends to get lost, but the u. S. Is the worlds leading power. The International Order is constructed around the very premise of u. S. Leadership, and thats been called into question, too. When we cant pay our Border Patrol people, when we cant pay the fbi, i mean, you saw that picture today of george w. Bush going out there, bringing pizza to the secret service who are guarding him, who are guarding him without a paycheck. And even he, who has stayed out of the fray more or less since leaving office saying please, isnt it time to put people back to work. I mean, it just, you know, we are all struggling with the thing that every single day for the last two years, sunday it will be two years of the trump presidency. Theres been something unthinkable, and yet, that is our new normal, so thats what i was trying to capture in the piece this week. Max, often, you know, when you sit down here, i say what the world is going on. You say that should be a segment or the name of your show, right. What in the world is going on. Thats every night. I sit here and i go what, like what is this. So i have been doing this in this business since 1991, 1992, in this business, but then sitting here in this seat for five years and at cnn since 2006 and i just covered International News of all sorts, all kinds of breaking news, Osama Bin Laden being killed and on and on, i have never seen anything like this. This particular week, though, has been crazy. What makes it crazier is that 28 days into this the president says, okay, im going to make an official announcement tomorrow, we dont know if this announcement is going to be a stunt or its going to be something that is substantiative. But do you think that this president can actually get democrats and republicans to sit down together from this announcement, get leaders at the table . Well, i hope so, but his track record does not inspire a lot of confidence. I mean, whats striking to me, don, is i think back on the last two years, and as susan rightly said, sunday is going to be the twoyear mark of the Trump Administration. It was born in chaos, the travel ban, chaos at the airports, peel didnt know who was allowed into the u. S. , who wasnt, what the rules were. Remember, it was incredibly chaotic, and if anything, looking back from two years vantage point, that seems like the good old days by now. That seems like things were relatively calm, because right now, the government or at least most of it is literally shut down, and there are legitimate questions being raised with the fbi having investigated whether the president owes his primary loyalty to the United States or to russia. I mean, these are the lev