David Schwartz Drops Suit Against BuzzFeed
Michael Cohen, the personal attorney for President Donald Trump who has found himself in the sights of federal prosecutors, on Wednesdaydropped his much-ballyhooed defamation suits in New York state and federal court against BuzzFeed and political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, according to court records.
The suits, which were filed in January following the outlets’ publication of research into Trump’s ties to Russia, were dropped days after federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York said in a filing that the search warrants executed last week on Cohen’s home, hotel room, office, safety deposit box and cellphones were the result of a monthslong investigation into his business dealings.
In his state court suit against BuzzFeed and his federal suit against Fusion GPS, Cohen denied the allegations against him in the now-infamous dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and blasted as irresponsible both Fusion GPS’ decision to release the dossier to the media and BuzzFeed’s decision to publish it.
“[BuzzFeed] made the decision to publish, even in spite of [its] awareness that the dossier was the secret product of a secretive private investigator, not intended to be part of public discourse or to make an argument in a public debate and that the dossier’s content also bore multiple hallmarks of its irresponsible collection and compilation,” Cohen said in his suit against the online news outlet.
Wednesday’s filings note that Cohen voluntarily discontinued the actions without costs to any party.
BuzzFeed published the 35-page Steele dossier in January 2017. Reports indicate that Steele was first hired by Fusion GPS to research Trump on behalf his opponents in the Republican primary and that the investigation was later taken up on behalf of the Democratic Party. The dossier includes numerous allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Although some of the research had been verified, much of it had yet to be either verified or disproven. BuzzFeed noted the unverified nature of the claims in its article revealing the full dossier and it left it to readers to “make up their own minds.”
Trump has denied the allegations in the dossier.
In his suits, Cohen denied the dossier’s reports about his role in the alleged collusion. Cohen stated that his father-in-law was not a Russian property developer, as the dossier claimed, and that although his wife is of Russian descent, she was born in Ukraine and had only been to Russia once.
He also denied attempting to cover up for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was indicted in October, or former campaign adviser Carter Page, who has also been linked to the alleged Russia collusion. Cohen also said in the complaint that he had never been to Prague, Czech Republic, where the dossier claimed he met with Russian officials to discuss paying hackers tasked with undermining the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Cohen accused Fusion GPS of “peddling” the dossier to the media, saying in the complaint, “Even though the dossier contained unverified allegations, defendants recklessly placed it beyond their control and allowed it to fall into the hands of media devoted to breaking news on the hottest subject of the day: the Trump candidacy.”
He also described BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the unverified allegations as “muckraking” and called the publication “indescribably destructive” to his reputation.
Cohen is represented by David M. Schwartz of Gerstman Schwartz & Malito LLP.
Buzzfeed is represented by Kate Bolger of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Fusion GPS is represented by Shawn Naunton of Zuckerman Spaeder LLP.
The cases are Michael Cohen v. BuzzFeed Inc. et al., case number 150231/2018, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, and Michael Cohen v. Bean LLC et al., case number 1:18-cv-00183, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
