Kellyanne Conway refused to deny that Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress: “the President weighed in on this on twitter this morning, so I’ll refer you to that”
— Evan Rosenfeld (@Evan_Rosenfeld) January 18, 2019
Asked about the story, published late Thursday evening, Gidley initially deflected from it by using misleading talking points in an attempt to discredit BuzzFeed.
“This is absolutely ludicrous, that we are giving any type of credence or credibility to a ‘news outlet’ like BuzzFeed,” Gidley said. “They are responsible completely and totally for the release of a discredited, disproven, false dossier [the Steele dossier], and now the author of the piece in question that you’re talking about went on air this morning and said he couldn’t corroborate any of his own evidence. He ran it anyway.”
What we learned from the BuzzFeed News report that Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress
The Steele dossier — a report written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and commissioned by Fusion GPS, an opposition research group hired by Clinton-tied Democratic campaign lawyer Marc Elias — was initially published by BuzzFeed shortly before Trump’s inauguration. The dossier contains many explosive allegations — including the infamous “pee tape” — and includes claims that the Trump campaign has extensive ties to Russia.
Though it is true that the six major claims in the Steele dossier are still unproven, some parts of it have since turned out to be substantiated. But there is still a lot we don’t know about Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election and Trump’s secretive business dealings.
It’s not the case that the journalists behind BuzzFeed’s bombshell report about Trump directing Cohen to lie “couldn’t corroborate” the allegations in their story. During an interview on CNN on Friday morning, Cormier said that while he hasn’t directly seen evidence that Trump directed Cohen to lie, his sourcing goes beyond the two law enforcement sources mentioned in the story.
“This 100 percent happened,” he said.
Gidley’s deflection, however, did not amount to a denial of the claim that Trump directed Cohen to lie. Host Bill Hemmer press Gidley on the key question.
“So you’re saying the president did not tell Michael Cohen to do that?” he asked.
Gidley again refused to answer the question.
“I’m telling you right now this is why the president refuses to give any credence or credibility to news outlets, because they have no ability to corroborate anything they’re putting out there. Instead they are just using innuendo and shady sources,” Gidley said.
But Hemmer noticed that Gidley still hadn’t addressed the matter at hand, telling him, “That was not a denial of my question.”
Gidley still refused to deny that Trump directed Cohen to lie.
“No, but the premise is ridiculous,” he said, before pivoting to trying to discredit Cohen.
“But the headline from that report, Hogan, is that the president personally directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations involving Trump Tower,” host Sandra Smith interjected. “Is that true or false?”
Gidley again refused to answer.
“Right, the president’s attorneys also addressed this,” he said. “I’m not going to give and credence or credibility to Micheal Cohen, who’s a convicted felon and an admitted liar. That's just ridiculous, and I’m not going to do that from the White House.”