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The Daily

The Perils of Reporting on an Investigation of the President

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.3107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The special counsel’s office disputed an explosive BuzzFeed report claiming that President Trump had instructed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress — and that investigators had evidence of this. The scrutiny that followed calls to mind another reporting team and its challenges in the 1970s. Guests: Bob Woodward, one of the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and Michael S. Schmidt, who has been covering the special counsel investigation for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:26.0

We begin the hour with a show stopping report from Buzzfeed that if true, could cost the

0:35.7

president his job.

0:38.4

The explosive report says the president personally instructed his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen,

0:44.3

to lie to Congress to hide the president's involvement in a real estate deal for a

0:48.8

Moscow Trump Tower.

0:50.8

Buzzfeed sites two law enforcement officials who say Mueller has evidence that the president

0:56.0

personally instructed Cohen to lie.

0:58.5

The story's most explosive and consequential claim is this.

1:00.9

According to Buzzfeed sources, the special counsel's office learned about Trump's directive

1:05.6

for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump organization

1:10.7

and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.

1:15.4

It's the most direct allegation yet that President Trump may have committed a crime.

1:26.6

What were you thinking when that Buzzfeed report first came out earlier this month?

1:32.0

My first thought was, damn, that's a really good story.

1:37.3

And it particularly hurt because I have spent much of the past two years focused on the issue

...

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