YESTERDAY ON
BUZZFEED NEWS:
What You Need To
Know About The Secret Trump Dossier: An unverified memo alleges ties between
Trump and Moscow. Trump strongly denies them. So does Russia. Facts, analysis,
and more on this ongoing story.
GUEST BLOG / By Anthony
Cormier, BuzzFeed News Reporter and
2016 Pulitzer Prize winner for Investigative Reporting while working at the Tampa Bay Times.
Here are the things you need to know about the fallout
from the dossier, published [Wednesday] by BuzzFeed
News, alleging that Donald J. Trump has deep ties to the Russian
government.
The dossier, which
is believed to have been written by a member of the British intelligence
community, contains unverified allegations that Russian operatives have been
“cultivating, supporting and assisting” Trump for years and have compromising
information about him, and that Trump advisers met with high-level Russian
officials in the months before the election.
After CNN reported
that President Obama and President-elect Trump were briefed on a two-page
summary, BuzzFeed published the
entire 35-page document, along with a warning that its contents were
unverified.
Trump responded to
the allegations with outrage. On Twitter he scolded intelligence officials for
allowing the dossier to leak and asked: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
Over 13 hours, he
tweeted seven times, denying the claims and calling their publication “FAKE
NEWS.” Trump is supposed to conduct his first press conference in 167 days at
11 a.m. today.
Multiple Russian
officials denied the country’s involvement with Trump or his advisers.
A Kremlin spokesman
called the dossier “pulp fiction” while the former director of the FSB,
Russia’s security service, told the Interfax news service that the Obama
administration “has pulled all efforts to compromise the winner of the
presidential race.”
One of the key
players, Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen, denied any involvement with
Russian officials. The dossier claims Cohen traveled to Prague and secretly met
with Russian officials in August.
Cohen has since said
he never visited Prague, and told The Atlantic that the dossier is “totally
fake, totally inaccurate.” The
Washingtonian reported that officials at the University of Southern
California confirmed that Cohen visited the Los Angeles campus on Aug. 23–29 —
though the dossier does not specify the day on which Cohen is alleged to have
visited Prague.
CNN’s Jake Tapper
reported that it was a different Michael Cohen who visited Prague. Meanwhile,
the metadata on Cohen’s Twitter account indicates that he was in the U.S. for
the majority of August. The longest period where his tweets are dark are two
consecutive days, Aug. 15 and 16.
At least one top
Democrat has called for an investigation of the allegation. Sen. Dick Durbin said
that dossier merits a congressional inquiry or a special commission, with the
power to issue subpoenas, led by “people of integrity like General Colin Powell
or Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.”
Durbin said in a
statement that he reviewed both classified and unclassified intelligence
reports last week, before the publication of the dossier. It was not
immediately clear whether the allegations would surface during today’s
confirmation hearing of Sen. Jeff Sessions, who is being considered for
attorney general.
Trump supporters
started a misinformation campaign about the dossier, circulating images on
4chan and Reddit that include passages not contained in the original document.
They claim the entire dossier is made up and that it was sent to a Republican
strategist, Rick Wilson, last year. Wilson denied being the source of the leak.
He has been involved in a long-running battle with Internet trolls after he
called Trump supporters “childless single men who masturbate to anime” last
January.
Some journalists criticized
BuzzFeed News’ decision to publish the dossier. Kelly McBride, an ethicist at
the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies, wrote that the “act of
publishing the dossier in its entirety isn’t journalism” and said BuzzFeed News
could have done more to fully vet the document and explain to readers the steps
it took to verify the claims.
Trump linked to a
story on lifezette.com, which is edited by Laura Ingraham, a conservative radio
host and Trump supporter, calling the publication of the dossier a “shocking
breakdown of journalistic ethics.” Richard Tofel, the president of the
nonprofit investigative site ProPublica, defended the decision and wrote on
Twitter that “citizens should have evidence to consider for themselves.”
About the Author:
Anthony Cormier is
an investigative reporter/editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
While working for the Tampa Bay Times, Cormier won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for
Investigative Reporting.
Contact Anthony
Cormier at anthony.cormier@buzzfeed.com.
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