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Seemingly using the opportunity of the disputed Buzzfeed story, Rudy Giuliani is now conceding a maximal version of President Trump’s attempts to get a multi-hundred million dollar payday from Vladimir Putin for the length of the 2016 presidential campaign. Giuliani quotes Trump saying that negotiations for the Moscow Trump Tower deal were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won.”

During the time Trump was singing Putin’s praises on the campaign trail and getting Putin’s help with hacking and information campaigns, Putin was dangling a few hundred million dollars in front of Trump.

I still do not think we have a clear read of just what happened or is happening with that disputed Buzzfeed story about President Trump telling Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. My best guess is that it is some dispute about Trump ‘directing’ Cohen to lie versus simply having him, allowing him to lie, having his lawyers concoct a false story line with Cohen, etc. If you listen to Giuliani’s words today it sounds like he’s trying to pry open the possibility that Trump knew Cohen was telling Congress things we now know were lies but simply didn’t remember or didn’t realize they were lies. Those can be meaningful distinctions as far as Trump’s criminal liability goes. They are not terribly important distinctions in terms of our getting to the heart of what happened in the 2016 election or Trump’s relationship with Russia. None are as important as what Rudy Giuliani again freely admitted today, which is that throughout 2016 Trump was trying to finalize a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow from which he believed he’d reap hundreds of millions in profits over the coming years.

This survey is now closed. The link to the survey has been removed and the original post is in italics below.

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I closed this survey after we got over 6,000 responses. First, thank you to everyone who took a moment to fill out the survey. The results are fascinating to me and very helpful. I’m sharing the results after the jump.

The Buzzfeed brouhaha and the Mueller denial recall a basic point. Our most critical national and civic need is to find out the truth of what happened in the 2016 election and who President Trump really works for today. That imperative is far more important than whether any individual person or group of individuals is incarcerated or otherwise punished for crimes. But that is not the purpose of the Mueller probe. It never has been. The Special Counsel investigation is a criminal and counter-intelligence investigation. Its goal is to find out whether crimes were committed and to prosecute them.

The Special Counsel’s Office has just released an almost unprecedented statement disputing at least parts of the Buzzfeed story that has roiled the national political discussion for the last twenty four hours. The statement is as follows: “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.”

The first thing to note here is that I don’t think the Mueller office has ever issued a statement like this. They hardly ever say anything at all beyond terse and procedural statements about court cases. I cannot recollect any other time when they’ve publicly disputed a story. If it’s happened once or twice, it’s extremely rare.

The other point to note is that this is not a blanket refutation of the story. The statement is carefully worded and disputes “description[s] of specific statements” and the “characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office.” It’s possible to interpret this as disputing specific subsidiary points in the story, while leaving the central claims intact. But that seems like a stretch.

In an unusual move, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller has issued a statement denying key elements of the Buzzfeed blockbuster that alleged President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress:

I want to discuss some details in the background of that new Buzzfeed reporting about Trump, Cohen and the Trump Tower Moscow deal. It’s more a matter of deduction, inference and some speculation. But you can’t understand what’s happening between Trump and Cohen without this part of the story.

As noted in last night’s post, the most logical source of this story is federal law enforcement centered out of New York City. But Michael Cohen also appears to be talking extensively to congressional investigators. In any case, President Trump obviously knows whatever it is he himself did. He doesn’t need to hear about it from Buzzfeed or sources on Capitol Hill. For all these reasons, President Trump clearly has a lot to fear from Michael Cohen, about topics that go far beyond the details of his hush money payments and campaign finance law violations. Trump wants to punish Cohen and shut him up.

Next consider that ABC News reported yesterday that Cohen was thinking of rolling back his congressional testimony because he feared President Trump’s escalating attacks are endangering his family. I checked in on this and Cohen’s worries seem to be two-tiered. One is the standard and understandable fear that the President’s railing could trigger some unhinged person to do something violent and rash. But it’s hard to figure where Trump’s comments are more likely to do that this week than they were last week or last month. The other concern – I suspect the driving concern – is that Cohen worries that Trump is trying to endanger his family, specifically his father-in-law, either legally or through violence.

This requires closer attention.

Buzzfeed’s late-night article, reporting that Trump instructed Cohen to lie about their work on Trump Tower and received 10 updates on it, is having ripple effects this morning. Here’s more on that story and others we’re following.

As you may have already seen, Buzzfeed published a major story tonight on the Russia probe: President Trump directly and repeatedly instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow deal.

I am going to share what I think are the key claims in the piece and some observations about the nature of the evidence. But before getting to those points an observation. The big news tonight is that President Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress. That’s a great scoop and it’s a big deal. But the issue isn’t really the lying. That flows almost inevitably from the original bad act. The President betrayed his country for the hope of a few hundred million dollars. He continues to do so today from the White House. This isn’t a crime that’s being uncovered. It’s one we’re still in the midst of. Whatever the criminal law makes of the lying, it is most important not because it is a crime in itself but because it is additional evidence of the conspiracy with Russia that propelled Trump into office and continues to this day.

Let’s go over the key points …