We Didn’t Need The BuzzFeed Report To Know Trump Is Involved In Multiple Crimes

The political world continues to be rocked by the controversy surrounding a bombshell BuzzFeed report published this week, particularly after special counsel Robert Mueller’s office disputed the accuracy of the story.

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According to the report, there is evidence that Trump directly told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. According to Mueller, that isn’t completely accurate.

But the dwindling number of Americans on team Trump shouldn’t be popping champagne and taking victory laps. The BuzzFeed brouhaha doesn’t change the fact that we already know this president is involved in multiple crimes.

In a discussion with MSNBC’s AM Joy, Elie Mystal of AboveTheLaw.com explained how the facts in this investigation really haven’t changed following Mueller’s pushback on BuzzFeed.

“Cohen lied to Congress, fact. Donald Trump lies all the time, fact. Donald Trump knew that Cohen was lying if not before Cohen talked to Congress then certainly after,” Mystal said. “If you look at all of those three facts, that’s the key of the BuzzFeed story.”

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Mystal explained how liberals are overreacting to Mueller’s pushback of the BuzzFeed report:

Something happens, there’s some pushback, there’s some nuance, and liberals go into this, like, backpedaling like, oh my god, now how will the anti-vaxers ever believe us? No. Here’s what we know. Cohen lied to Congress, fact. Donald Trump lies all the time, fact. Donald Trump knew that Cohen was lying if not before Cohen talked to Congress then certainly after because Donald Trump knows the truth and he knows that his lawyer was lying to Congress. If you look at all of those three facts, that’s the key of the BuzzFeed story. The verisimilitude of the BuzzFeed story is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether or not BuzzFeed gave us the impression that Mueller had proof, Mueller was able to lock it down in such a way — and again, when I say proof, I don’t mean proof necessarily even at the level of being able to prove it in a court of law. I’m talking about even a higher level of proof that people want which is being able to prove it to these yokels on Twitter who are all into Trump’s headspace, right? That’s what we’re trying to get and that’s why the BuzzFeed deflation is so depressing I think for people on the left because if the BuzzFeed report was 100% accurate which it now does not appear to be, if it was 100% accurate, that would have finally put people like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham in the box where you had, as they said, texts and e-mails and all of this stuff that they could not deny. It turns out we are still in a world where Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins and whatever can pretend like there’s not a massive conspiracy to obstruct justice and that’s why people are upset.

The overall fact pattern hasn’t changed

As Elie Mystal said on Saturday, Robert Mueller’s pushback of this particular BuzzFeed report doesn’t change what already learned up until this point.

We know Cohen lied to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow deal. Answering the “why” question is critical, but we still know it happened. It’s unlikely that Trump was unaware he was lying, either before or after.

We also know that Trump himself lies all the time. According to The Washington Post’s fact checker, the number of lies he’s told since taking office is approaching 8,000.

More important, we already know this president personally directed Cohen to commit crimes to influence the election.

Ultimately, while the BuzzFeed story had the potential to force spineless Republican lawmaker out of their shells and stand up to this president, Trump has already crossed multiple legal red lines that break the threshold needed to consider impeachment proceedings.

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Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.