AT&T chief says hiring Cohen a ‘big mistake’

WASHINGTON — Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, said Friday that the company had made a “big mistake” by hiring U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to advise on the telecommunications giant’s deal to buy Time Warner.

“Our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days, and our reputation has been damaged,” Stephenson wrote in a memo to employees. “There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.”

Stephenson’s note followed the revelation that the company had paid Cohen $600,000 (all figures U.S.) to advise on the $85.4-billion merger with Time Warner and other regulatory matters.

He also said in the memo that the company’s head of lobbying and external affairs, Bob Quinn, 57, would be retiring.

Federal prosecutors are investigating Cohen’s business dealings, including a $130,000 payment he made to porn film actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, as part of a deal to buy her silence about an affair she says she had with Trump. The president has denied her claims.

The payment to Clifford was the first known activity involving Essentials Consulting, a socalled shell company incorporated in Delaware by Cohen. It was through Essentials Consulting that AT&T retained Cohen.

The disclosure of AT&T’s ties to Cohen comes at a critical moment for the company, which is defending its merger with Time Warner in federal court against the Justice Department’s efforts to block the deal.

Stephenson insisted in his memo that “everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate” and that Cohen did not do any lobbying on behalf of AT&T. Nonetheless, he added, retaining Cohen “was a serious misjudgment.”

“In this instance,” he continued, “our Washington, D.C., team’s vetting process clearly failed, and I take responsibility for that.”

Time Warner was not aware of AT&T’s contract with Cohen, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking. Within Time Warner this week, officials were surprised to learn about the contract with Essentials Consulting.

AT&T has said Cohen approached employees in the company’s Washington office shortly after the election. He promised to provide advice on who the “key players” would be in Trump’s administration and “their priorities and how they think,” AT&T said in a fact sheet released Friday.

The company also said in the fact sheet that it had been contacted late last year about Cohen by the office of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election and other matters, and had “co-operated fully.”