UPDATE 1-White House says report that Trump directed lawyer to lie is false

A BuzzFeed News report that said U.S. President Donald Trump had directed his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress was false, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Friday.

"Look, that's absolutely ridiculous," Sanders told reporters during a brief exchange on the White House driveway. She said Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had addressed this subject and had said in a statement that the report was "categorically false."

Congressional investigators said they plan to examine whether Trump broke the law in the wake of the report by BuzzFeed News.

BuzzFeed said Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about building a skyscraper in Moscow while he was running for president.

(Reporting by Steve Holland Writing by Susan Heavey and Makini Brice Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Trott)