Democratic lawmakers promised Friday to investigate a report that President Donald Trump directed his longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, to lie to Congress about Trump's role in negotiating a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The now-disputed report, published by BuzzFeed News late Thursday evening, prompted some senior members of Congress - yes, Democrats - to fall over each other in making public statements that the allegations, "if true," could be grounds for impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Then came a very rare statement from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller:
"BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate," the statement said.
The president thanked Mueller for that statement - vague though it was - and acted as if that statement indicates the entire Russia/Trump probe had just been disproved.
Though nothing could be further from the truth, Trump tweeted:
"Remember it was BuzzFeed that released the totally discredited 'Dossier,' ... on which the entire Russian probe is based!" he tweeted. "A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our Country!"
BuzzFeed stands by its story, and here's what's important to remember: Trump repeatedly lied about his connections and financial involvement with Russia throughout 2016. He said he had no business deals in Russia, even as he was angling to build a skyscraper in Moscow. Forget about whether Trump directed Cohen to lie or just knew that he was lying - the core truth America must understand and finally come to grips with is that Trump lied about it. Over and over and over - even after he was elected president.
Like so many other threads of this sad, sordid presidency, the story told by Cohen and other presidential aides about the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations has changed with the wind.
First, they said talk of the project never moved beyond a beginning, barely involved Trump, and ended in January 2016 - well before the primaries.
But in November, when Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the negotiations, he and the special counsel's office revealed that the talks were more detailed and had extended at least until the middle of 2016. Cohen said he had lied to "minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1" - Trump - "in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations."
And on Sunday, another of Trump's lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that Trump's efforts to complete a business deal in Russia waned only after Americans cast their ballots in the presidential election.
The Trump Tower Moscow discussions were "going on from the day I announced to the day I won," Giuliani quoted Trump to The Times.
Why so much lying? Would you vote for someone, anyone, Hillary, Marco, Jeb, Donald or Bozo the Clown, if you knew they were bowing to Russia to build a billionaire crash pad for Vlad and his buddies in Moscow?
If anything, BuzzFeed's story and Mueller's "correction" of it shows America just how determined Trump was and is to lie to us day after day after day.
The new truths found in this shifting timetable mean that Trump was seeking a tower "deal" in Russia at the same time he was calling for an end to economic sanctions against Russia. He was seeking a deal when he questioned the legitimacy of NATO, a favorite talking point of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. He was seeking a deal in 2016 when he called on Russia to release hacked Democratic emails.
In the words of Washington Post columnist Max Boot, the Mueller statement on BuzzFeed's report may have helped Trump dodge accusations that he actively suborned perjury, "but what he did was bad enough - he concealed his business dealings with a hostile foreign power that was helping him to win the presidency. That BuzzFeed might have gotten some part of the story wrong hardly exonerates Trump."
Trump, of course, reveled in the spanking and attacked all media as "fake news."
But thanks to real news reporting, we know the Trump campaign tinkered with the language of the Republican platform to be less critical of Russia. We know Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, got millions of dollars from pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine. We know Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had secret conversations with the Russian ambassador and then lied to the FBI. We know Trump asked FBI Director James B. Comey to shut down the investigation of Flynn and later told Russian diplomats that firing "nut job" Comey eased pressure on him about Russia.
We also know Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and Manafort met during the campaign with a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, and the elder Trump dictated a misleading press statement about it. We know Trump repeatedly tried to fire Mueller. We even know Trump tried to hide details of his meetings with Putin from his own aides. And we know that the FBI investigated Trump as a possible Russian asset.
Before it's all over, we'll know the whole sordid story.
Buckle your seat belts, America.