OT Mueller debunks BUZZFEED Story

Meanwhile BuzzFeed doubles down:

Check my facts. Jason Leopold was fired from LA Times, Salon for his fabrication of stories,

And remember - Meuller did NOT say there was no evidence that Trump told Cohen to lie - he DID say details in the report were not accurate.

That can be taken more than 2 ways -- - - -

Exactly.

A babe in the woods. I thought everyone on Usenet was over 50 years old, and yet you seem to have so little experience listening to people who don't want to show their whole hand.

His answer is a standard answer, "Your report is not accurate". Used by politicians, businessmen, lawyers, teen-agers. We should all learn to say that ourselves, for when people tell us what gossips have been saying about us. There is usually no duty to ccrrect everything that is not accurat e.

Absolutely. If the Buzzfeed story represented a leak, he wants to diminish its importance until he's finished his report. I dont' think it would have to be a leak. There must be a few onlookers to different parts of the process who are not part of Mueller's team. But either way,Mueller would want to tamp down this news story,

Not to mention that if some details *were* inaccurate, he probably has a duty to tell the public that, instead of letting them believe every little thign. .

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yep.

The BBC is describing Mueller's office's statement as "taking issue with the Buzzfeed report", which to anyone listening will sound like Mueller denies the whole thing. Maybe they had a longer story that gave enough detail, but people don't listen to the radio 24 hours/day.

I guess they should say, "has said that specific statements and characterizations are not accurate." Even that sounds like none of them are at all accurate.

Another standard answer, very closely related, when someone says something hateful or otherwise embarrassing in a small meeting and other people find out: "I didn't say that". So if he said "Those people are a bunch of dungheads" but someone says he said "Those people are a bunch of crapheads", he will without compunction, and if need be under oath, say "I didnt' say that". And he won't look back.

But in this case Mueller's office is using the technique in what is almost surely a positive way.

What was claimed here doesn't just exist by itself, in a vacuum. Let's review. Trump lied, and lied and lied during the campaign and after. He swore to America that he had no business involvement with Russia, none at all, except for having sold a house a decade ago to some Russian and hosting his beauty contest there once. At the time he was saying that we now know that he was having ongoing negotiations with Russians, had a letter of intent, to build a Trump tower in Moscow. Discussions were going on about getting a meeting with Putin, a person involved proposed giving Putin a penthouse to increase the value of the rest of the apartments. So Trump was the first one that lied about this.

Later, after he was in office, the truth came out. Trump then tried to minimize it and in his testimony to Congress, Cohen lied and claimed that the negotiations were over, ended in January 2016, before the first primaries. In reality they continued until June, when Trump was already the presumptive nominee. Now, why would Cohen tell this lie? There was nothing illegal that Cohen or anyone else had done, nothing that would embarrass Cohen personally. The only reason for lying was to protect the president. Now, is it logical that Cohen just did that on his own, without coordinating it with Trump or someone in the WH close to Trump? How would Cohen know what the lie du jour was to be? Suppose Cohen went and lied to Congress, said it ended in January, and then the WH came out and said, no, the truth is work on the deal continued until June? How would that look?

Also, let's look at a similar incident where a huge lie came undone, the Trump tower meeting with the Russians. Trump and team Trump lied, and lied about that. They denied they ever met with *any* Russians about anything. When that story broke, what happened? Team Trump immediately tried to cover that up, do damage control and fall back to more lies. Who crafted those lies? Donald Trump himself while on board AF1. He personally dictated the lies, that the meeting was just about adoption. Within a day that lie blew up, only to be replaced by another lie or misleading statement, which lasted a couple more days until it too was exposed.

So, we'll have to wait to see, but it seems 99% certain to me that Cohen coordinated his lies to Congress with someone in the WH. Now it's possible that by that time Trump may have wised up, taken some legal advice and maybe Cohen didn't discuss his lie with Trump himself. But I doubt it. Trump is a moron and it's very likely that he did discuss his lies with Trump. Another possibility is that he discussed the lie with Trump or one of his minions earlier on and they settled on the lie that the deal ended in January and Cohen didn't specifically talk about lying to Congress with Trump. The final nail in Trump's coffin is that what Cohen testified to was widely reported and Trump and the WH did not come forward at that time and say that what Cohen had just testified to was a lie.

This is no small thing. Would Trump have won the election if America knew he was working on a deal, essentially already trying to use the presidency, to secure a deal for a Trump tower in Moscow? I don't think so. It involves Trump trying to leverage, use his running for his own purposes. And it explains, at least in part, possible motivation for Trump's bizarre love for Russia and Putin. In short, there is no question that Cohen lied to Congress to help Trump and that he's almost certainly telling the truth to Mueller on what really happened. Exactly what that truth is, we'll know when Mueller makes his report, but based on the facts here, it sure isn't going to be good for Trump.

There was no duty for Mueller to do anything, what he did was very unusual, so it's likely that something very significant there is wrong, possibly the core allegation, that Trump himself told Cohen to lie to Congress. I doubt it's some details that prompted Mueller to go public.

No it wouldn't. There have been all kinds of leaks previously, some right, some wrong and Mueller didn't feel the need to correct those. It's extremely unlikely that it's a detail, it has to be something very significant, very possibly the core allegation that Trump himself told Cohen to lie to Congress.

Of course it's a leak. Buzzfeed said it was two law enforcement sources. And that's probably part of what has Mueller mad.

Little things don't matter and he has no duty to correct. Did he come out and correct all the other BS stories put forth?

Not if you are a biased Trump-hater. Leopold lied, Cohen lied.

Leopold's history indicates that he and verifiable facts are perfect strangers.

Truimp lied needs to be added to the list.

I don't think I said that but if I did, it doesn't contradict anything above which is about what Mueller is thinking. No need for me to "make up my mind."

He didn't blow it up. He postponed it.

He didn't blow it up. He claimed one statement, the statement by Buzzfeed, was inaccurate. Later we will see an accurate rendering of the situation. He didnt' drop the whole thing because Buzzfeed got something barely wrong, slightly wrong, very wrong, or incredibly wrong.

I don't think that's the only rational reason.

That's libel. When you get like that, I stop replying

That's more of your silly stuff. When you get like that, I stop replying

If it does it is because the left are intelligent enough to post something coherent.

"Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it. It is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy, called a wiki. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes per hour."

I haven't seen any real noticeable, consistent bias in wiki. It looks pretty balanced and very factual based to me.

ROFL

It took me a minute to get what you meant by that. On a similar note, I've said here before, I'm amazed that Hannity has a large audience. I used to like him years ago, back in the days when he had Alan Colmes on his TV show. But over the years, he's just gone whacko. Regardless of what you think of his core positions, his radio show, IDK how anyone can listen to it regularly. I tune it in for a few minutes a few times a week. There could be some big, breaking news story involving politics, but at Hannity it's like being in some bible thumping, mind washing church service. Except it;s all Comey, Comey, McCabe, Roesentstein, Mueller, Steele, Hillary, Hillary, Deep State, Comey.... At least he's stopped talking about the pee pee tapes. That was a hoot. For a year he kept bringing that up, like he's helping defend Trump by talking about Trump, hookers, and pee pee! ROFL

Typical liberal tactic. Throw something out there, true or not. Have a few liberal sycophants believe it as anything a fellow lib says must be true.

Issue gets proven false but then libs demand it be addressed since it is out there.

If you do not understand this, google up Lyndon Johnson when first running story about putting out the rumor that his opponent had sex with farm animals.

What did he say about them?

I've heard two contradictory stories.

What did Hannity say about the pee pee tapes? That they don't exist, there was no pee pee or hookers, the whole Steele file is all lies, paid for by Hillary.

Coming from Hannity if there are only 2 conflicting stories you missed something - - -