The New Yorker:

With “President Pence” and “President Pelosi” trending on Twitter on Friday morning and some Democrats talking openly about starting impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, the White House dispatched Hogan Gidley, the deputy press secretary, to respond to a story from BuzzFeed News claiming that Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project. Rather than issuing a straightforward denial that his boss had tried to suborn perjury from his former personal lawyer and fixer, Gidley attacked Cohen, saying, “I am not going to give any credence or credibility to Michael Cohen, who is a convicted felon and an admitted liar.” Gidley also attacked BuzzFeed. “This is absolutely ludicrous that we are giving any kind of credence or credibility to a news outlet like BuzzFeed,” he said. “There is nothing in that piece that can be corroborated.”

In the past few years, BuzzFeed News has built up a formidable team of investigative journalists, it has won a number of awards, and what Gidley said was mostly hot air. But the survival of the Trump Presidency may depend on the accuracy of his final assertion. On Friday evening, the office of the special counsel Robert Mueller took the rare step of issuing a public statement to dispute the BuzzFeed News report. The statement, issued by a spokesman, Peter Carr, said: “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.”

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