A BuzzFeed After-Action Report with Leopold and Cormier
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2019
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On January 17, 2019, BuzzFeed News reported a blockbuster. The headline reads, President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project. It was a remarkable story, and within 24 hours of its publication, the Special Counsel's office had issued an unprecedented statement taking issue with it and describing unspecified components of it as "inaccurate." It wasn't clear at the time what parts of the story were inaccurate and how much of it was true, but in light of the actual Mueller report, we can now identify the parts of the story that had problems and the parts that did not.
The two reporters who wrote the story, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold, joined Benjamin Wittes by phone to do a kind of after-action report on the story. They discussed how they came to report what they reported, what parts of the story they stand by, what parts they think they messed up on, how the story was sourced, and what the discrepancy between the story and the Mueller report tells us about the conduct of Donald Trump.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | As a journalist, you cannot get to just rent. |
| 0:37.0 | I have to get it all right. |
| 0:39.0 | I have to get every single, |
| 0:41.0 | filibol correct. |
| 0:43.0 | And in this case, I did not. |
| 0:46.0 | That I wrote that it was an explicit instruction. |
| 0:50.0 | One, in fact, the evidence now shows that the city was not explicit. |
| 0:55.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittis, and this is the LawFair podcast April 30, 2019. |
| 1:03.0 | On January 17th of this year, Buzzfeed News reported a blockbuster. |
| 1:09.0 | The headline reads, President Trump directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, |
| 1:13.0 | to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project. |
| 1:17.0 | It was a remarkable story, and within 24 hours of its publication, |
| 1:22.0 | the Special Counsel's office had issued an unprecedented statement taking issue with it, |
| 1:28.0 | and describing unspecified components of it as, quote, inaccurate. |
| 1:34.0 | It wasn't clear at the time what parts of the story were inaccurate, |
| 1:39.0 | and how much of it was true, but in light of the actual Mueller report, |
... |
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