Thread by @TheViewFromLL2

The SCO's statement tonight tells us that Buzzfeed's story is inaccurate in its "description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office." It's all reading tea leaves at this point, but this section of the article is probably one covered by the SCO's statement:

Again, it's all guesswork, but the "Trump personally instructed Cohen" part might be the part Buzzfeed got wrong, or perhaps summarized too generously.

But if the instruction came from Trump Org, that could explain how Buzzfeed and/or its sources got this wrong.

This comment from Ronan Farrow would support that interpretation. Whatever happened, it wasn't Trump calling up Cohen's sell and personally instructing him on what to say.

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1086425618802241536

But Michael Cohen was getting instructions from someone serving Trump. It's impossible for it to have been otherwise -- his lies to Congress required coordination with people in TrumpWorld.

Cohen's publicly-reported-on statements to Congress were lies.

So Trump knew they were lies. Trump Jr. knew they were lies. Trump Org knew they were lies. Cohen couldn't freestyle that not knowing if they would back him up in the story.

Which is why Cohen didn't just wing it. When he prepared his August 2017 2-page statement on the Moscow Tower, he did so while in "close and regular contact" with Trump's people.

Because Cohen lying, by itself, wouldn't help Trump.

What good would it do for Cohen to lie about the extent of Trump's children's involvement in the Moscow deal, unless Cohen was confident that when Don Jr. testified to congress a week later, he'd maintain the same messaging?

But also Trump directly, personally, telling Cohen to lie wouldn't make much sense either.

For one thing, Trump is the absolute *last* person you'd want to have in charge of coordinating a series of carefully developed falsehoods designed to avoid political and legal trouble.

Which makes me wonder more about my earlier guess about what sort of evidence the SCO actually has. Before Cohen submitted his statement on Moscow Tower, he *must* have run it by Trump's team -- and he's just maybe dumb enough to have done so in text form.

https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/1086396676464693255

Cohen's sentencing memo is almost as opaquely written as statement from SCO's spokesman, but it doesn't sound like the very time-specific lies Cohen decided to tell Congress were something he figured out by guesswork. This was a strategy, and someone was coordinating it.

Anyway, that's my theory on the Buzzfeed mess. SCO objected because its evidence is not about Trump personally phoning up Cohen and ordering him to tell a precise lie, which is how the Buzzfeed story was being read.

Instead, what SCO most likely has is evidence of Cohen's false testimony being coordinated by actors within Trump World, and Cohen getting his marching orders on what the party line was going to be. /end

Two more points: First, my hunch is that the inclusion of the word "personally" is where Buzzfeed strayed here. If Trump gave instructions for what needed to be lied about, but someone else coordinated the messaging and passed word to Cohen, then Buzzfeed's article is wrong.

Second, I keep getting hung up on this line from Cohen's sentencing memo. During this time, Cohen was acting as Trump's personal attorney — which means the attorney-client privilege issues here could be quite thorny. Perhaps avoiding such issues is part of SCO's general strategy.