A federal court judge this afternoon ordered Michael Cohen’s legal team to name a previously unnamed third client (his other two are Donald Trump and Republican fundraiser Elliot Broidy) he advised in 2017, and that client turns out to be Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The disclosure came during a hearing challenging the FBI’s seizure of documents from Cohen’s office.
In an earlier court filing Monday morning, lawyers for Cohen refused to identify the recent client — one of three people Cohen represented between 2017 and 2018. The lawyers also refused to identify the names of other past clients.
Lawyers for Cohen — whose business records were seized by FBI agents April 9 — said the then-unnamed client had told Cohen not to disclose his name and that they believed Cohen had a duty not to disclose it.
They also said that if Cohen’s clients, other than Trump, were publicly revealed, it is “likely to be embarrassing or detrimental to the client.”
Hannity later tweeted: “Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective….I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party.”
Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 16, 2018
I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party.
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 16, 2018
The disclosure made things a bit awkward over at FOX News, where Shepard Smith addressed it, The Hill reports:
Smith is the first Fox News anchor to mention the link on air.
“Of course, for us, the elephant in the room is that Sean Hannity is said, according to court documents, to have been a third client of Michael Cohen,” Smith told viewers. “There’s a statement at The Hollywood Reporter supposedly from Hannity that says, ‘We’ve been friends a long time. He did some legal work for me.’ “
“Hannity’s producers are working to contact him,” Smith continued. “Since it’s now part of the story we’ll report on it when we know the rest of it. A lot of people here know his number so we’ll get on that in just a second.”
Media Matters reports that Hannity had hired Cohen to go after them:
Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported on MSNBC soon after that Hannity hired Cohen “to help defend him against left-wing groups that were calling for boycotts,” an apparent reference to Media Matters’ well-publicizedcampaign to get advertisers to stop supporting Hannity’s program. Sherman added that Hannity may have hired “other lawyers and/or private investigators” as part of the effort.
Hannity has not previously divulged employing Cohen as a lawyer, even as he extensively denounced the FBI’s raid on his Fox broadcast last week.
On his show last Monday, for example, Hannity devoted his opening monologue (and much of the rest of the show) to arguing that the Cohen raid points to an “all-hands-on-deck effort to totally malign and, if possible, impeach the president of the United States” and the declaration of “a legal war on the president.” The next night, he said the raid was “an unprecedented abuse of power.”
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti spoke after the hearing and called Michael Cohen “radioactive,” adding that the link to Sean Hannity just proves his point.
Stormy Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti says President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen is "radioactive," and that "anybody that was associated with him in the last 20 to 30 years should be very, very concerned." https://t.co/JMLuWzyX3r pic.twitter.com/taRzRPBrFL
— CNN (@CNN) April 16, 2018
