2016 ELECTION/MEDIA/MICHAEL COHEN/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “For much of the past 20 months, President Donald Trump and his administration have insisted that, for all of the smoke surrounding his 2016 campaign, there was no fire. A lot of people in Trump’s orbit engaging in conversations and relationships with Russian officials, but no evidence of collusion and certainly nothing that linked Donald Trump to any wrongdoing. That very well might have changed Thursday night, with this report from BuzzFeed: ‘President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter. ‘Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. ‘Make it happen,’ the sources said Trump told Cohen.’ A day after the report published, Mueller’s office disputed it as ‘not accurate’…It’s hard to overstate what a big deal that is. No other major outlets have confirmed the BuzzFeed report. But if the BuzzFeed report is right, then the President of the United States directed an underling to lie under oath — which is, in and of itself, a crime.”
–Chris Cillizza, “This may be the smoking gun in the Russia investigation,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, January 18, 2019 8:44 pm