Trump's personal attorney slaps BuzzFeed with a lawsuit for publishing Trump-Russia dossier
- Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, has reportedly filed a defamation suit against BuzzFeed for publishing the unsubstantiated collection of memos known as the Trump-Russia dossier last year.
- Cohen is also reportedly suing Fusion GPS - the intelligence firm that commissioned the research into the alleged ties between Trump and Russia - and its cofounder, Glenn Simpson.
President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has reportedly filed a defamation suit against BuzzFeed after the news outlet published the unsubstantiated collection of memos known as the Trump-Russia dossier last year, according to Bloomberg News.
Cohen is also reportedly suing Fusion GPS - the intelligence firm that commissioned the research into the alleged ties between Trump and Russia - and its cofounder, Glenn Simpson, Bloomberg reported.
"It will be proven that I had no involvement in this Russian collusion conspiracy," Cohen said to Bloomberg on Tuesday. "My name was included only because of my proximity to the president."
The infamous dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele, has been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration because of the dossier's salacious and explosive allegations - most notably the allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russian officials. BuzzFeed published the dossier in full last year.
In a statement to Bloomberg, BuzzFeed claims to have exercised its right to publish the dossier: "Its interest to the public is obvious," BuzzFeed spokesman Matt Mittenthal said. "We look forward to defending the free press and our First Amendment rights in court."
The White House has repeatedly questioned the veracity of the dossier's claims. Trump and his surrogates have also attempted to cast the document as a partisan attack, noting that a lawyer representing Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Fusion GPS for research services that began in April 2016.
Before that, the research that went into the Russia dossier had been funded by the wealthy Republican donor, Paul Singer.
Cohen is implicated in the dossier as part of the wider Trump-Russia allegations, and was reportedly a central figure in "the ongoing secret liaison relationship between the New York tycoon's campaign and the Russian leadership."
Cohen has since denied the allegations of conspiracy: "I can tell you for certainty that neither I nor the president were involved, at any point in time, with this Russian conspiracy," Cohen said to Vanity Fair in a previous interview.
"I've never been paid by or colluded with any Russian to hack the DNC, to create search-engine optimization tools to cause Trump's positives up and Hillary's negatives up."