Tipsheet

BuzzFeed Busted: The Red Flags Were Everywhere In Their Trash Trump-Russia Story

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 20, 2019 4:35 PM

Once again, we had a “bombshell” story about the Russia investigation. And once again, it totally blew up in the mainstream media’s face. It brought liberal America to full froth. They licked their lips. They lusted for impeachment—and then it was exposed as straight trash. Who exposed it? Well, that would be the investigation helmed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose office issued a rare statement debunking the BuzzFeed article that President Trump directed ex-personal lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed real estate deal in Moscow. For an entire day, this was obsessed over—and then the devastating blow to the face. From the start there were issues, you already know what they are, but one glaring one was that authors Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold seemed to be on different pages concerning the evidence to back up their story. Cormier said he hadn’t seen the evidence, while Leopold said we’ve seen documents. On that too, the Mueller investigation said no such documents exist. 

The Washington Post and The New York Times did some cleanup of this total disaster of a story, and the former admitted that they speculated without fully confirming the story.

Via WaPo [emphasis mine]:

When BuzzFeed published the story hours later, it far exceeded Carr’s initial impression, people familiar with the matter said, in that the reporting alleged that Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and self-described fixer, “told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie,” and that Mueller’s office learned of the directive “through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.”  

In the view of the special counsel’s office, that was wrong, two people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. And with Democrats raising the specter of investigation and impeachment, Mueller’s team started discussing a step they had never before taken: publicly disputing reporting on evidence in their ongoing investigation.

[…]

People familiar with the matter said after BuzzFeed published its story — which was attributed to “two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter” — the special counsel’s office reviewed evidence to determine if there were any documents or witness interviews like those described, reaching out to those they thought might have a stake in the case.

They found none, these people said. That, the people said, is in part why it took Mueller’s office nearly a day to dispute the story publicly. In the interim, cable news outlets and other media organizations, including The Washington Post, dissected its possible implications — even as their reporters were unable to independently confirm it.

Over at RedState, Joe Cunningham aptly dissected the story, citing that one of its co-authors, Leopold, has a history of generating total fake news. 

Well, at least, some publications had a tinge of mea culpa, but it doesn’t negate the overall fact: you people suck. That’s all anyone should say to the liberal mainstream news media over their horrific error in their reporting of this investigation. In fact, the entire news media has been straight trash when it comes to reporting on this White House or Russia collusion. CNN couldn’t read email timestamps properly concerning Wikileaks and Donald Trump, Jr. Over at ABC News, Brian Ross stepped in it, and tanked the markets, when he reported that then-candidate Donald Trump ordered Michael Flynn, who eventually became Trump’s national security adviser, to make contact with the Russians during the 2016 election. Actually, it was President-electTrump who directed Flynn to make contact after the election, which was part of your routine protocol in establishing the diplomatic groundwork of a new incoming administration. At CNN, they were harping on a lead that Trump knew in advance of the worthless Trump Tower meeting his son had with some Russians in which nothing major was disclosed, and it all turned out to be a colossal waste of time. The source said, “Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller.”

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Who was the source? Oh, it turned out to be Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer. And he retracted everything he said prior. You can’t polish a turd. You can’t spin this. This is a total and complete defeat for the opposition press, who is suffering from an addiction to eating straight sewage from the trough that is the Russia investigation.

Now, that doesn't mean the liberal media won't try to defend BuzzFeed. They have, and it's totally pathetic. And BuzzFeed stands by their trash reporting.