On April 16, it was revealed that Sean Hannity, a passionate supporter of Donald Trump was one of the clients Cohen had from 2017 to 2018. During a case hearing in the federal court, Cohen was asked to provide details of all his three clients.
Two of those three clients were Donald Trump and Elliott Broidy. Broidy who was removed from the seat of deputy finance chairman was accused of impregnating a woman and paying her for keeping her mouth shut. And the third client, about whom Cohen didn’t want to speak, was Sean Hannity.
Kimba Wood who was presiding the hearing asked Cohen’s attorney to reveal the name of the third client. In reply, the lawyer said that Sean Hannity was the third client of Michael Cohen. However, no link was found between the two and no one knows why Cohen was representing Hannity.
Speaking to AM Radio, Hannity explained that there is only an attorney-client privilege between the two and he never sensed Cohen in a traditional way. He further said that I never treated Michael as a traditional lawyer and he never represented me in any legal matter. Also, I never paid him any fee or he never sent me an invoice. Hannity also said that they only had attorney-client privilege.
Later that day, Hannity tweeted that I had a confidential conversation with Cohen but he never represented me against any third-party. He added that his discussions were on the topic of real estate.
Hannity is a passionate supporter of Trump and spoke on-air many times as the representative of the president. Hannity also criticized Mueller’s investigation against Trump. In his recent interview, Hannity also defended Cohen about the FBI raid on Cohen’s office. While giving an interview to a program on Fox News, Hannity said that Mueller’s aim is to catch Trump at any cost.
He also said that Cohen was never a part of Trump’s administration and he had nothing to do with the activities of the president. After that Hannity said that all of these efforts have only one target and that is to impeach the president of the United States.
On next day, Hannity called the FBI’s raid on Cohen’s office as the abnormal use of power. Later he said the raid was highly questionable. Till now, Hannity had claimed his relationship with Cohen, neither on TV nor on Radio.
Later, many questions were asked by the Ethics Experts that why this relationship was not been revealed by the Fox News. The former director of government ethics, Walter Shaub, asked:
Why did Fox News not reveal the relationship between Hannity and Cohen before?
No official statement was made by Fox News as NBC News asked the same question after that. However, in Monday’s proceeding, the judge denied Cohen to review the documents found during the raid. Wood appointed a team of neutral prosecutors to review the documents and determine which documents are violating the attorney-client privilege. Wood said that I have a complete faith in Attorney as their integrity is unquestionable. While speaking about the taint team (Wood named the team of prosecutors as ‘Taint Team’), Wood said that having a taint team is a viable option in this scenario.
However, Trump’s attorney Joanna Hendon had a different view of what Wood said. Hendon said that being the owner of the privilege, Trump had a right to review the documents first. Thomas McKay, Assistant U.S. Secretary, responded that having a strong client does not mean that he has a right to review the documents first.
According to the U.S. Attorney Office, Cohen is under federal criminal investigation but still, no offense was found against him. Federal investigators reported that the investigation that led towards the raid was heavily dependent on the personal business dealings of Cohen. An interesting thing to know here is that Stormy Daniels who accused Cohen of paying her to keep silent about her affair with the president back in 2006 also attended the hearing.
FBI agents also searched for the evidence of the payment made by Cohen to Daniels. Later it was revealed that 10 boxes full of the document and a dozen electronic devices like mobile phones and hard drives were seized in FBI’s raid. Trump’s reaction to the raid was severe saying that it is an attack on him.