President Donald Trump‘s attorney Jay Sekulow has penned another op-ed for Fox News, this one lambasting BuzzFeed News for the disputed report alleging that Trump told ex-lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Project.
Sekulow said that he regards the BuzzFeed report as “dangerous.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller, you may have seen, issued a statement on Friday through his spokesman Peter Carr. “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Carr said.
Two federal law enforcement sources were cited in the report claiming that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress. Cohen previously pleaded guilty in Mueller‘s probe to making false statements to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow negotiation known as the Moscow Project. Cohen admitted that he lied when he said negotiations ended in Jan. 2016, but BuzzFeed claimed Trump told Cohen to tell those lies. BuzzFeed stood by the story, and so did the reporters.
All of this raised new questions about the president’s legal exposure, which Rudy Giuliani handled as he does, and it set off a wild news day of “if it’s true” qualifications. It was precisely this wild news day and wishful thinking that Sekulow said was “a danger to our constitutional republic.”
“The moment the story was published, the liberal media jumped for joy – and the drumbeat started – repeating the falsehoods beginning with a common mantra used by many in the media: ‘If it’s true,'” Sekulow said. “You can fill in the blanks from there. ‘If it’s true . . .’ – all together now – ‘the president committed a crime and should be impeached.'”
Sekulow said that it didn’t seem to matter that Trump “immediately denied the allegations” or that no news outlets could confirm the BuzzFeed report.
Rhe Trump attorney then “unpacked” the Peter Carr statement.
“The Special Counsel’s office focuses on three areas: 1) ‘BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office’; 2) ‘and characterizations of documents’; 3) ‘and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,'” Sekulow continued. “That’s three critical areas that ARE NOT ACCURATE. The description of specific statements – the characterization of documents – and testimony obtained by the Special Counsel’s office – ARE NOT ACCURATE. ”
Sekulow proceeded to criticize Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for declaring that the House Intelligence Committee would look into the reporting.
“Based on what? A bogus BuzzFeed report?” Sekulow asked. He then criticized BuzzFeed for standing by the story. “Disturbing. Standing by a report that the Office of Special Counsel soundly rejects?” he said.
“[E]xposing the BuzzFeed story for what it really was proved once more that media speculation with no factual backup not only damages the credibility of the news media itself but represents a danger to our constitutional republic,” Sekulow concluded.
As we alluded to in the opening, Sekulow has recently penned a couple of Fox News op-eds. Although he wrote a few in 2017, that was not the case in 2018. This changed once 2019 rolled around. Sekulow decided to opine after anti-Semitic tweets from an Ohio woman who went on to become a medical resident went viral.
In fact, Sekulow filed a formal complaint arguing that Lara Kollab should be stripped of her medical license.
[Image via Fox News screengrab]
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