AT&T CEO: Hiring Cohen a ‘big mistake’
AT&T’s chief executive said Friday his company made a “serious misjudgment” to seek advice from President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, and announced that its top lobbying executive in Washington would be leaving the firm.
“Our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged,” AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson wrote in a companywide internal email. “There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.”
The email comes at a critical time for AT&T. A judge is deciding whether its controversial $85 billion merger with Time Warner violates antitrust law. Internal AT&T documents obtained by The Washington Post show how AT&T agreed to pay $600,000 to Cohen last year in exchange for guidance on policy matters, including issues it is facing at the Federal Communications Commission and its proposed deal with Time Warner.
Stephenson’s apology was also an extraordinary admission from a company that has long run one of Washington’s largest and most sophisticated lobbying shops and donates millions of dollars each year to hundreds of candidates on both sides of the aisle. Last year, AT&T spent nearly $17 million on federal lobbying, the third highest among companies.
Some within Washington’s cozy lobbying circles expressed bemusement that AT&T was apologizing for behavior that has become commonplace for corporations in the capital — paying for advice about the government’s most powerful decision-makers.