Inside the Mueller team’s decision to dispute BuzzFeed’s explosive story on Trump and Cohen

Washington Post ^ | Jan. 19, 2019 | Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett

[Brilliant]

The media is making itself irrelevant by destroying its own credibility.

[gloryblaze]

Interesting. I heard Joseph DiGenova remark that with Bob Barr’s pending appointment, Mueller knows there may be a new Sheriff in town.

[AndyJackson]

Also known as the famous movie Dr. Strangelove.

[nwrep]

My guess is that Bob Barr called up Mueller and asked him to comment on this. Barr said to Mueller “You should not let this lie go unchallenged.”

[Thank You Rush]

“”I just don’t trust any of these Deep State Clowns. There’s some larger purpose going on.””

I have to agree. I refused to get excited about the “retraction” or whatever you want to call it. They’ve done this to us so it’s no wonder we are cynical and skeptical about everything now. I don’t trust any of them!! Maybe we should organize a group and protest as it’s the “thing” to do today. Everyone else is offended by something or other. We are offended by our government!

[rightwingcrazy]

WP said that Buzzfeed said than anonymous sources in the Special Prosecutor’s office said that Michael Cohen, under duress, said that Donald Trump said that he should perjure himself. Scandalous! They got Trump for sure this time!

Now WP says that the Special Prosecutor’s office says never mind: Cohen didn’t say that Trump said that, exactly, or maybe at all. What a relief!

[SamAdams76]

When the Buzzfeed story broke, I didn’t really give it much attention. We the reading public, have been saturated with all sorts of outrageous accusations about our president. To me, this was but another ‘Chicken Little’ event of faux hysteria. I am now conditioned to disregard most articles like that one.

Same here. I've pretty much tuned out mainstream media and don't even bother keeping up with the latest "outrage of the day". To be honest, I spent the whole day on Friday not even knowing what these latest allegations even were - as I knew they would blow over as the other 2,743 "outrages" have since Trump entered the race in June of 2015.

Frankly, I'm at the point now where I honestly won't care if ever one of these allegations pans out to be true. I support my president 100%.

[AnthonySoprano]

.
The WAPO author Devlin Barrett, is Strzok’s bitch.

You are not getting the Truth.

He’s a flunky mouthpiece.

[31R1O]

Use incognito mode with your browser.

[cymbeline]

“Mark Levin’s take: The BuzzFeed article would open ...”

My take: Mueller’s team has hard evidence that the BuzzFeed article isn’t true. Had Mueller withheld that evidence, thus allowing the continuation of another headache for our President, when that act of withholding eventually became public it would be seen as very dishonorable.

[griswold3]

Reading the posts there, it’s like witnesses at an accident. They see things totally different. Nothing else matters but getting rid of Trump. That’s why the cannot ever get rid of Trump. They are dangerous.

[norwaypinesavage]

"I urge everyone to read this thorough, well-researched article.

I disagree. It's ordinary for a news story to state the 'meme' of the article in the first one or two sentences. This attracts readers and also gives them the meat of the story.

The meme here, at least in the sentences you excerpted, is that Trump ordered Cohen to lie to congress. That's the opposite of reality, and not even the supposed purpose of the article. You have to get well into the story to learn the truth. Someone skimming the article introduction gets the opposite impression.

[yesthatjallen]

The MSM got caught in their own hysteria and this is CYA article.

The WP is trying to salvage their reputation by carefully parsing events.

I believe the WP is trying to find a way to justify the medias' overreaction to the BF article while trying to keep it alive by implying it may be true.

In fact they KNOW it's true (it so fits the MSM narrative it HAS to be true). They just haven't figured out why Mueller threw them under the bus.

We'll have to wait to see what comes next...

[abbastanza]

The media is irrelavant.

[Verginius Rufus]

I agree. Mueller knew the story was fake, and was afraid that the truth would come out. If he said nothing and allowed the story to dominate the news for days, and later people realized it was fake all along, he would be discredited...sort of like Dan Rather and the fake documents in 2004.

I don't doubt that he is still determined to take down Trump--but he may be thinking of inflicting enough damage that Trump is defeated for re-election, knowing that Trump has done nothing which would justify two-thirds of the Senate voting to remove him from office.

That doesn't mean that the House won't vote for articles of impeachment. I figure the list will be longer than four items, to surpass the number of articles of impeachment voted against Bill Clinton. They will all be highly tendentious items (like firing Comey being obstruction of justice, or letting foreign diplomats stay in his hotel being a violation of the emoluments clause). Friday's story could even re-appear: they could ask Michael Cohen to testify that Trump had asked him to lie to Congress (and give him limited immunity to protect him from prosecution for perjury).

[YogicCowboy]

Yes. Self protection.