Hannity named as Cohen client
Revelation draws TV host deeper into Trump’s orbit
NEW YORK — From his Fox News pulpit, Sean Hannity has been one of the most ardent supporters of President Donald Trump, cheering his agenda and excoriating his enemies.
He has gone from giving advice on messaging and strategy to Trump and his advisers during the 2016 campaign to dining with him at the White House and Mar-a-Lago.
Now, Hannity finds himself aligned even more closely with the president.
During a hearing at a packed courtroom in Manhattan on Monday, he was named as a client of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.
That revelation nudged the conservative commentator into the orbit of those who have lately come under legal scrutiny related to the investigations of Trump and his associates by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Both inquiries have provided fodder for Hannity’s prime-time cable show and nationally syndicated radio program.
The host’s closeness with the president may not sit well with media watchdogs, but the cozy relationship has been good for the Hannity business: Hannity is the most-watched cable news program, averaging 3.2 million viewers in the first quarter of 2018, up from 1.8 million in the early months of 2016.
The courtroom disclosure about Hannity occurred during the expanding criminal investigation into Cohen by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. FBI agents raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room on the morning of April 9, a move that Trump called an “attack on our country.”
In a legal filing before the hearing Monday, Cohen said that, since 2017, he had worked as a lawyer for 10 clients, seven of whom he served by providing “strategic advice and business consulting.” The other three comprised Trump, the Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy and a third person who went unnamed.
The mystery was solved when Kimba Wood, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ordered that Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan, disclose the name of the client in question — who turned out to be Hannity.
Hannity denied on Monday that he was a client of Cohen’s, saying that he had never paid him for his services and that his discussions with him were brief and centered on real estate.
The surprise naming of Hannity took place after several minutes of back and forth in court.
Before the name was revealed, Ryan argued that the mystery client was a “prominent person” who wanted to keep his identity a secret because he would be “embarrassed” to be identified as having sought Cohen’s counsel.
Robert Balin, a lawyer for various media outlets, including The New York Times, CNN and others, interrupted the hearing to argue that embarrassment was not a sufficient cause to withhold a client’s name, and Wood agreed.
After Hannity was named, there were audible gasps from the spectators.
The hearing Monday resulted from a challenge by Cohen’s lawyers, who argued for the appointment of a “special master” to examine the records seized during the federal raid on April 9. The exact nature of Cohen’s work for Hannity is unclear.