Donald Trump has established himself as a President who has little or no regard for upholding common practices when it comes to political interaction and/or interference with major news organizations. The latest chapter in that ongoing subplot comes from TMZ, who are reporting that one of 45's attorneys is taking aim at BuzzFeed for their handling of a "dossier" that ties him to the Russians.
Michael Cohen is suing the aforementioned outlet over its article published January 10th of 2017, titled: "These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties to Russia." Those reports, many of which were allegedly compiled by a former British intelligence agent, have taken on a life of their own, becoming this "infamous dossier" that the White House clearly fears in a big way.
Legal docs reveal that Cohen is particularly pissed about a claim made in the dossier that "he used his wife's and her father's Russian ties [...] in order to set up a meeting with a Russian property developer." Cohen denies the allegations and is also refuting the notion that he met with Russian officials while traveling in the Cezch Republic. According to the lawyer, he's never even set foot in that country. Cohen says that, although BuzzFeed did disclose that the memos collected contained several bits of unverified information, the defamation he suffered was still severe.
However, BuzzFeed isn't backing down from its stance in the article, with a spokesperson telling TMZ that the dossier is "the subject of active investigations by Congress and intelligence agencies," and because of this amount of public interest in the subject matter, they're not changing a thing about their approach. "This is not the first time Trump's personal lawyer has attacked the free press, and we look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court," the organization added.