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BuzzFeed Corrects Trump-Cohen Conspiracy Article After Mueller Report Rips To Shreds

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 19, 2019

While MSM journalists spent much of Thursday suggesting that the Mueller report somehow vindicated two years of irresponsible reporting insisting that President Trump colluded with Russia, BuzzFeed quietly corrected an article that was so wrong the Special Counsel’s office issued a rare statement rebuking the report.

Anthony Cormier, Jason Leopold

On January 17, BuzzFeed‘s Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier dropped an anonymously sourced “bombshell” boldly proclaiming “President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project” (spearheaded by Cohen and longtime FBI informant and convicted fraudster Felix Sater — who gave the same BuzzFeed reporters a comprehensive interview last march).

The article claims that Trump instructed Cohen to tell Congress that discussions over the Moscow project ended in January, 2016 when they in fact ended months later.

In an unprecedented move, Mueller’s office immediately disputed the BuzzFeed report right after it published, writing: “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 stood by their reporting, saying it “stands by this story 100%.” Leopold and Cormier confidently appeared on CNN that weekend where Cormier insisted “Our reporting is going to be borne out to be accurate.”

Except, it wasn’t

Following the Thursday release of the redacted Mueller report which found that Trump did not direct Cohen to lie, BuzzFeed quietly corrected their story.

BuzzFeed explains

In a Thursday statement, BuzzFeed’s Editor-In-Chief, Ben Smith, explains how “two senior law enforcement sources” provided leaked documents “specifically, pages of notes that were taken during an interview of Cohen by the FBI.”

Our story was based on detailed information from senior law enforcement sources. That reporting included documents — specifically, pages of notes that were taken during an interview of Cohen by the FBI. In those notes, one law enforcement source wrote that “DJT personally asked Cohen to say negotiations ended in January and White House counsel office knew Cohen would give false testimony to Congress. Sanctioned by DJT. Joint lawyer team reviewed letter Cohen sent to SSCI about his testimony about Trump Tower moscow, et al, knowing it contained lies.”

The law enforcement source also wrote: “Cohen told OSC” — the Office of Special Counsel — “he was asked to lie by DJT/DJT Jr., lawyers.”

At the time, the sources asked reporters to keep the information confidential, but with the publication of Mueller’s report they have permitted its release. –BuzzFeed

In short – Cohen told the FBI that Trump directed him to lie, which leaked to BuzzFeed, which presented it as fact, and was immediately rebuked by Mueller. 

BuzzFeed isn’t the first outlet to correct an article following the release of the Mueller report. McClatchy issued an editor’s note on anonymously sourced news reports published on April 13 and December 27 of last year claiming that Cohen visited Prague during 2016.

Mueller’s 448-page report debunks this, stating “Cohen had never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false.”

In response, McClatchy wrote: “EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Mueller’s report to the attorney general states that Mr. Cohen was not in Prague. It is silent on whether the investigation received evidence that Mr. Cohen’s phone pinged in or near Prague, as McClatchy reported.” 

April 19, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump Tower Moscow: A CIA-Backed Provocation Against Putin, Trump – Economist

Sputnik – December 5, 2018

The media fuss surrounding the Trump Tower Moscow project that was never implemented may further exacerbate Russian-American relations, Sputnik contributor Ivan Danilov wrote, sharing his views on what was really behind the much-discussed initiative

The Trump Tower Moscow “plot” was nothing less than a CIA-backed provocation, deems Ivan Danilov, a Russian economist and Sputnik contributor.

“If we separate wheat from the emotional chaff of US media, we would get the following: immediately after [Donald] Trump becomes a presidential candidate, an agent of several US intelligence agencies, [Felix Henry] Sater, who had been earlier embedded in Trump’s business structure, came to then [Trump’s] lawyer [Michael Cohen] with a ‘brilliant idea’: to give [Vladimir] Putin a penthouse in order to turn the Russian president into an element of advertising”, Danilov wrote in his latest op-ed.

The economist underscored that one important link is missing in this chain, stressing that no one had confirmed so far whether the American president knew about the Sater-Cohen plan and endorsed it.

If this link is missing, the whole “chain” snaps, according to Danilov.

On 17 May 2018 BuzzFeed News reporters  Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold broke that Trump’s two “key business partners” had been secretly negotiating a deal aimed at building “an icon of the Trump empire — the Trump World Tower Moscow” amid the 2016 presidential campaign.

The media outlet referred to “exclusively” obtained documents revealing “a detailed and plausible plan” and “well-connected Russian counterparts”.

On 29 November, Cormier and Leopold unveiled ex-Trump business associate Sater’s plan “to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin” as part of the aforementioned real estate initiative. Sater discussed this plan with Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, who hailed the idea at that time.

“My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin”, Sater told BuzzFeed News.

Meanwhile, on 29 November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower project in Russia in an attempt to “minimize” his boss’s ties to Russia.

However, the biggest news about the proposed real estate deal is that it was considered “during the 2016 primaries and caucuses,” The Washington Post highlighted on 30 November, stressing that the former Trump lawyer earlier lied that the endeavour had been brought to naught before the primaries.

“This provides more evidence that the project was being rather seriously pursued with potential assistance from the Russian government, despite Trump’s presidential candidacy and despite Trump’s regular assurances that he didn’t deal with Russia”, the Post claimed.

In addition, Cohen “did recall” that in or around January 2016, he received a “response” from Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s press secretary, Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote on Thursday.

For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed what sort of response he gave to Trump’s business associates after receiving Cohen’s letter that was sent to his official email.

“They were asked what the presidential administration has to do with this and if they realized who they contacted”, the Kremlin spokesman recalled. “They said they wanted to build a house… They were told that the administration is not engaged in construction projects and we will be happy to see them at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum if they are interested in investment”.

The case does not appear to be a smoking gun. Commenting on the media fuss, a source close to the US president told Fox News that the Sater-Cohen plan to provide the Russian president with a penthouse would have been a “stupid idea”, and emphasised that Trump had “never heard” about it.

Sater’s longstanding cooperation with US intelligence services, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) adds further controversy to the case.

On 12 March, 2018, Cormier and Leopold reported that Felix Henry Sater (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky), 52, had “spent more than two decades as an intelligence asset who helped the US government track terrorists and mobsters”.

Given all of the above, the whole case looks like a “three-penny provocation” aimed at discrediting President Donald Trump, Danilov pointed out.

“One can presume that the next phase of the scandal will be the publication of Sater and Cohen’s photographs on the side-lines of the SPIEF or near the venue of the forum in the American media, which, from the point of view of US investigators, may well prove that the ‘Kremlin and Trump plot’ did take place”, he noted, bemoaning the fact that this “three-penny provocation” could seriously affect the already complicated US-Russian relations.

December 5, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Treasury official charged with leaking classified info to feed ‘Russia meddling’ narrative

RT | October 18, 2018

A US Treasury official was arrested and charged with conspiracy for leaking secret banking documents to the press, feeding a everlasting stream of often bogus ‘bombshell’ reports about Mueller’s notorious ‘Russian meddling’ probe.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 40, was named in the criminal complaint filed in the federal court in New York on Wednesday. Edwards was a senior advisor at the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN. In that capacity, the government says, she illegally copied and sent to the media Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR), starting in October 2017.

The complaint described a “pattern of unauthorized disclosures” concerning the investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice related to Russia, including “among other things, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Mariia [sic] Butina, and Prevezon Alexander.” Manafort and Gates were indicted by Mueller as part of the “Russian meddling” probe – on charges that had nothing to do with Russia or the 2016 US election – and Butina was accused of being a Russian agent. Prevezon Alexander is a Russian-owned real-estate company.

At the time of her arrest, Edwards had a flash drive that contained some 24,000 files, including “thousands” of SARs. Other documents found on the drive contained “highly sensitive material relating to Russia, Iran” and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), the complaint said.

The FBI also searched her cell phone, and found “numerous communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted SARs and other sensitive government information” to the reporter. They reportedly exchanged at least 300 messages.

Though the complaint does not name the reporters or the organization Edwards leaked to, it does mention several of the dozen articles in which her information was used, which carry the bylines of Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier of BuzzFeed News.

One of these articles, titled “Secret Finding: 60 Russian Payments ‘To Finance Election Campaign of 2016’,” was presented as bombshell proof of Russian “meddling” in US elections, until it emerged that the transactions were about the Russian parliamentary election that year.

SARs are confidential documents filed by banks and financial institutions to alert law enforcement of potentially illegal transactions. They are not public documents and it is a federal crime to disclose them.

To the disappointment of those who expected the Mueller probe to overturn the 2016 US presidential election, former Trump campaign manager Manafort and his business partner Gates were charged for the entirely unrelated crime of tax evasion, related to their lobbying work for the government of Ukraine. Gates took a plea deal in February 2018, while Manafort was found guilty on several charges in August. He later made a plea deal to lesser charges in a second case, also unrelated to the 2016 election.

Butina, a Russian gun rights activist and recent American University graduate, was arrested in July and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent. The Russian government says she is a political prisoner. Media reports falsely insinuated that prosecutors had accused Butina of trading sex for favors, eventually admitting they were “mistaken” in interpreting her text messages.

Edwards was released on a $100,000 bond. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison. It is unclear what impact, if any, her indictment will have on the charges against Butina, Manafort or Gates.

October 18, 2018 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment