Day 453: Sean Hannity’s Contradictory and Ever-Changing Story Makes No Sense

Revealed to be Michael Cohen’s third client, Hannity’s excuses ring hollow.

Fox News commentator Sean Hannity and Donald Trump have long-enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Hannity gets a direct line to Trump in exchange for sunshine-pumping news and Trump gets good press from someone in exchange for access. Hannity has even adopted the language of Trump, railing against “fake news CNN” on his show and on Twitter. In turn, Trump happily promotes Hannity’s show on his own Twitter account.

But most people assumed that was the extent of the relationship until yesterday. After Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had his office, home and hotel room searched and his filed seized, Cohen sought to conceal the identity of a mysterious third client in court filings when arguing that the government had no right to take the files. (The second client was earlier revealed to be Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, who Cohen helped negotiate a $1.6 million settlement with a woman who got pregnant during an affair with Broidy.) Monday, a judge overruled Cohen’s request and the client was revealed to be none other than Hannity.

Hannity had egg on his face immediately as he had previously sharply criticized the raid on a number of occasions and never disclosed his conflict-of-interest.

Hannity went on the defensive and contradicted himself early and often. First, he claimed that Cohen was never his lawyer and he never paid legal fees.

But on his radio show, Hannity admitted he wanted “attorney-client privilege” on some issues and did pay Cohen.

Hannity wants his cake and to eat it too: Cohen was never his attorney, but for moments when he was. Attorney-client privilege on a conversation is not something someone can just pay for: a relationship is either created or it is not. Here, by Hannity’s own words, it’s clear one was created.

On top of that, at least one of Cohen and Hannity is lying. Cohen wrote a letter to the court, informing the judge that the third client asked that they not be identified.

Cohen’s defense attorneys refused to identify the then-anonymous third client — one of three Cohen worked for between 2017 and 2018 — in a court filing submitted earlier Monday, arguing that it was “likely to be embarrassing or detrimental to the client.” The attorneys further argued the court should respect the third client’s request not to be identified in a letter to Wood.

“The third legal client directed Mr. Cohen to not to reveal their identity publicly,” Cohen’s lawyers wrote. “As to the one unnamed legal client, we do not believe that Mr. Cohen should be asked to reveal the name or can permissibly do so,” they added.

Hannity, however, claims he directed Cohen to do no such thing.

But if Hannity’s statements were true, he must have been blindsided when he was revealed to be Client No. 3. After all, he allegedly considered himself — contradictory — to not be a client of Cohen at all and asked Cohen to not reveal their relationship. So when Cohen was forced to reveal Hannity as the third client, Hannity should’ve been stunned by the disclosure.

“I have been covering this story non-stop and had no clue Cohen was referring to me,” he could have said. Or, “I chuckled when Cohen revealed me to be Client No. 3 because I didn’t think a couple conversations rose to the level of an attorney-client relationship, but apparently he did,” he could have mused. Instead, Hannity offered a standard excuse that he would have uttered had he been outed a month ago.

Ultimately, Hannity’s post hoc explanations don’t comport with logic. They reveal he knew exactly what Cohen was doing in court and it was his identity that was being protected. It shows he knows he was a client. And, in no small feat, it shows his hypocrisy more than any sycophantic, fawning Trump take he has ever had on his TV show. He hid a material fact from his viewers and made his guests look foolish by not disclosing his relationship with Cohen, making them unwitting accomplices to Hannity’s concealment.

453 days in, 1009 to go

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