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1/ Breakdown of SC denial of Buzzfeed story re Cohen testimony: SC denial begins with saying that BF description of "specific statements" made to SC office not accurate. Doesn't say which statements, so need to start there
2/ Only "specific statement" attributed to Cohen that he told SC that "after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did in order to obscure Trump' involvement." SC denies something there
3/ But we don't know which part. Could be just the "after the election" part. Maybe Cohen actually said this happened during the campaign. Could be "personally" bc Trump did it through intermediary. Neither would deny the core of the story that DJT told Cohen to lie to Congress
4/ SC also took issue w "characterization of documents and testimony" given to them re Cohen's congressional testimony. There, SC could be taking issue w whether there were "multiple" witnesses, whether the emails were "internal company emails," whether there were "text messages"
5/ Again, none of this necessarily disputes the core story that Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress. So why else would the SC issue this rare denial? My theory is that they may have wanted to indirectly shut down the narrative that they leaked it in the first place
6/ They can't directly deny leaking b/c then they would have to confirm or deny leaking every time, or raise suspicion why they denied this one, but not others. This could be a very clever move by the SC to shut down the harmful leak narrative w/o fully denying the core story.
7/ Finally, look at what they DIDN'T deny. They didn't deny that Cohen testified that Trump instructed him to lie to Congress, or that they had corroborating evidence. So everybody take a deep breath and try not to read too much into this ambiguous denial.
