BuzzFeed's Anthony Cormier is one half of the writing team that published the bombshell report about the Trump Tower project in Moscow Thursday. In it, the authors allege that President Trump told his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to the FBI about the timeline of the construction project. The report cites "sources," sans names, but on CNN, Cormier insisted that those individuals check out and that he's "100 percent" sure their story is accurate.
“I am rock solid. My sourcing on this goes beyond the two that are on the record. This 100% happened,” @a_cormier_ says about his BuzzFeed report that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about proposed Moscow project. https://t.co/sF3XuqPfkq pic.twitter.com/BMCzhs904a
— New Day (@NewDay) January 18, 2019
On the other hand, he told Alisyn Camerota that he has "not personally" seen the evidence he cited in the report. But, he said, “the folks we have talked to — two officials we have spoken to are fully, 100 percent read into that aspect of the Special Counsel’s investigation.”
He went on to explain that his "sources" have been on the Trump Tower Moscow project long before Mueller was even in the picture and they had invaluable materials.
“So they had access to a number of different documents, 302 reports which are interview reports,” Cormier said. “That stuff was compiled as they began to look at who the players were speaking with, how those negotiations went, who all from the Trump organization and outside the organization were involved in getting that tower set up.”
The CNN hosts brought up how Cormier's co-author Jason Leopold was once under fire for his inaccurate reports he wrote about Karl Rove for Salon in 2002. Still, CNN contributor Garrett Graff seemed content with the BuzzFeed authors' report, considering they were the team who "nailed" the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia V. Veselnitskaya in 2016.
"I have every reason to trust their sourcing," Graff said.
Democratic representative David Cicilline (RI), who also admitted he has not seen the evidence that Cormier cited, nevertheless predicted that it could be "the most serious threat" to Trump's presidency. He demanded Congress be given the chance to investigate.