Fox News, completely removed from “news”
Yesterday, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Michael Cohen‘s attorney was forced to reveal that Cohen has three clients: Donald Trump, former Republican National Committee Deputy Finance Chairman and donor Elliott Broidy, and Sean Hannity of Fox News. The reveal of Hannity as Cohen’s heretofore mystery third client raises some serious questions:
First, Sean Hannity is a walking conflict of interest. He has interviewed and/or “reported on” Cohen at least a dozen times, without ever disclosing their relationship. Most recently, Hannity railed on-air against the FBI’s raid on Cohen’s office, home and hotel room pursuant to a search warrant executed after Special Counsel Robert Mueller III referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The FBI raid involved, among other matters, Cohen’s $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels a/k/a Stephanie Clifford on behalf of Donald Trump after Daniels’ affair with the married Trump. Hannity’s failure to disclose his relationship with Cohen, at minimum, removes Hannity and his employer Fox News completely from the realm of journalism and even “news media.” As a result, there have been calls for Fox News to fire Hannity. Likewise, Fox News needs to come clean about what they knew in this matter.
Second, Elliott Broidy is involved in controversies regarding Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, the latter of which concerns Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. elections, and which thus falls into the purview of Special Counsel Mueller.
For his part, Hannity claims that:
“Cohen never represented me in any legal matter.”
He said the two men chatted occasionally, and his questions “focused almost exclusively” on real estate.
Hannity said “I never retained his services, I never received an invoice. I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees.”
Obviously, that’s something Hannity would need to take up with Michael Cohen and Cohen’s attorney, who specifically named Hannity as one of only three Cohen clients.
More to the point, Cohen’s specialty is arranging payoffs for women to keep quiet about their affairs with Trump and Broidy. Cohen also attended Thomas M. Cooley Law school, considered the worst law school in the United States. It would be odd if Hannity simply and coincidentally sought advice from Cohen for, say, real estate matters, as Hannity claims, instead of from another, more highly qualified attorney.
So what is Hannity doing directly with Cohen, and maybe directly or indirectly with Trump and others? For example, as progressive podcaster Brian Krassenstein speculated:
If there was any, and I mean ANY coordination between Michael Cohen & Sean Hannity regarding what to say about Stormy Daniels, and this information was untrue, Stormy now can sue Sean Hannity and Fox News for Defamation
Daniels's wealth may have just got $100 Million higher!
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) April 17, 2018
Likewise, recall this report from January, indicating that Russian trolls were using Hannity’s Fox News program to undermine Robert Mueller’s investigation. For now, the matter known as “Trump/Russia” deepens.
Photo by Jason Eppink, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/d5Vdvg
