Fox News host Sean Hannity, one of President Trump’s most vocal supporters, dismissed Monday’s revelation that he was named as a client of Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer.
Hannity began his show Monday with a “special shout-out” to “all you liberals” and the news media, who he said were “absolutely apoplectic and hyperventilating” over the news. He also said that the “rampant speculation” over the revelation “couldn’t be more wrong.”
He told famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz that his relationship with Cohen was “minimal” and “such a minor relationship.”
He defended his decision not to have disclosed the relationship, despite covering the Trump White House each night, as a matter of “privacy.”
“It was such a minor relationship, and it had to do with real estate and nothing political,” he said.
He continued at the end of his show, “My discussions with Michael Cohen never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions. And to be absolutely clear, they never involved any matter, any — sorry to disappoint so many — matter between me, a third party or third group at all. And my questions exclusively almost focused on real estate. I’ve said many times on my radio show, I hate the stock market, I prefer real estate. Michael knows real estate.”
Dershowitz told Hannity on the program, however, that he thought the relationship should have been disclosed.
“Well, first of all, Sean, I do want to say that I really think that you should have disclosed your relationship with Cohen when you talked about him on this show,” he said. “You could have just said that you asked him for advice or whatever. I think it would have been much much better had you disclosed that relationship.”
Cohen was in federal court in New York on Monday. After U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood ordered him to name his clients, Cohen’s lawyers acknowledged Hannity was one.
On his radio show, which aired just after that news broke, Hannity acknowledged he sought advice from Cohen, but said Cohen never represented him in “a traditional sense.”
“I’ve known Michael a long, long time. Let me be clear to the media: Michael never represented me in any matter. I never retained him in a traditional sense. I never received an invoice from Michael. I never paid legal fees to Michael,” Hannity explained.
Hannity did say later that he “may have” handed Cohen $10 and said: “I want privilege to cover me about this conversation.” But he stressed that media speculation that he was involved in some kind of settlement was wrong.
“That’s not what happened, ever,” he said.
Hannity said that the conversations were “brief,” and he assumes “those conversations are attorney-client confidential.”
Cohen’s office was raided by authorities last week, reportedly in an attempt to obtain records related to monetary settlements with women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump several years ago.
