Posted on 04/16/2018 8:24:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I know he’s a Democrat, I know Hannity once pulled a gun on him, but I’m still surprised to see a Fox contributor broaching the big ethical criticism of their 9 p.m. guy on their own airwaves before he’s even had a chance to address the situation on his show.
Fox host Juan Williams questions Hannity's refusal to disclose his relationship with Michael Cohen: pic.twitter.com/XOrRWFVeWj
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) April 16, 2018
I wonder if Williams freelanced it or if he got the green light from management, which must be highly annoyed by Hannity’s cameo in the news today — assuming he didn’t disclose it to them privately before. Although, if he did disclose it, that would raise a bigger ethical problem. Namely, why’d they let him go on the air without insisting that he tell viewers that he’d gotten legal advice from Cohen?
Then again, maybe they wouldn’t care:
Why is anyone surprised @seanhannity is a client of Michael Cohen's?
Hannity doesn't work for @FoxNews. He works for Trump.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) April 16, 2018
Hannity claimed earlier this afternoon that the legal advice he sought from Cohen was almost exclusively about real estate. Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair wonders:
“You know, this is a fast-moving story, so I am going to be doing a lot more reporting but what I have heard so far is that at some point last year Sean Hannity hired Michael Cohen to help defend him against left-wing groups that were calling for boycotts in the wake of Bill O’Reilly’s ouster from Fox News,” Sherman told host Ali Velshi.
Noting that Hannity had come under pressure from left-wing groups — Media Matters, for one, targeted Hannity’s advertisers over the Seth Rich story — Sherman said he was told that Hannity “got paranoid” and hired Cohen to look into those groups.
“This could be interesting because oftentimes private investigators are hired by law firms because it allows attorney/client privilege to be maintained,” Sherman added. “So there is a scenario in which if they seized Michael Cohen’s documents inadvertently we might be able to learn to what degree did Sean Hannity try to go after his enemies with shady tactics like private investigators.”
It’s hard to tell if Sherman’s just speculating about the P.I. angle or if there’s more to it but Hannity emailed MSNBC after Sherman’s appearance to deny that his consultations with Cohen had anything to do with that.
In fairness to him, as I noted earlier, there does seem to be a scenario in which Hannity may have been honestly mistaken about whether he was a “client” of Cohen’s or not. If it’s true that the only time he sought legal advice was informally, when he and Cohen were shooting the breeze about other matters, and all he asked about was mundane real-estate stuff, I can imagine him assuming that there was no lawyer-client relationship. He didn’t pay Cohen, he didn’t ask him to represent him against a third party, so he wasn’t a client — or so he thought. Cohen, however, may have had an incentive to inflate Hannity’s importance because he’s grasping for ways to impress the judge in Manhattan that there are *lots* of privileged communications in his files and therefore prosecutors shouldn’t be allowed to sift through them willy-nilly. So voila — Hannity is elevated by Cohen to “client” status, whether he really is or not.
I think that’s what Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is hinting at here in accusing Cohen of throwing Hannity under the bus. If it’s true that Hannity and Cohen had no meaningful lawyer-client relationship and Cohen exaggerated it for the purposes of asserting attorney/client privilege, Hannity’s suddenly smack dab in the middle of a media sh*tstorm because it was convenient for Michael Cohen to put him there:
Michael Avenatti on the reveal of Cohen’s mystery third client: “I think Sean Hannity got thrown under the bus by Michael Cohen’s counsel” https://t.co/jUy5Zfe1Ns
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 16, 2018
Two things, though. If Cohen gave Hannity legal advice only sporadically, almost in passing, why would there be anything in his files about Hannity that prosecutors might now possess? Wouldn’t that advice have been given verbally, in person or over the phone? If Hannity was emailing him for legal tips, that formalizes things a bit. And second: Are we sure Hannity never paid him? What on earth does this mean?
Hannity on Cohen: "I never gave him a retainer. Never received an invoice…. Might have handed him $10. I definitely want attorney-client privilege."
?
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) April 16, 2018
“Pause for a moment to reflect upon what one Sean Hannity might do with news that an MSNBC personality had hidden a relationship with a Clinton attorney under criminal investigation,” said one of Hannity’s enemies at Media Matters. Touche.
Cohen and Trump lost their hearing today, by the way. At least one Democratic House member has called on Hannity to be fired for failing to disclose his relationship with Cohen to Fox’s viewers but it’s almost impossible to imagine that. To restate a point I made earlier, does anyone believe that Hannity would have criticized the feds less, or not at all, for raiding Cohen’s office if his own communications hadn’t been caught up in the raid? Is it possible at this point to imagine Hannity being less than 10 out of 10 on the volume scale with respect to any political problem Trump has, whether he’s personally caught up in it behind the scenes or not? Andy Levy joked in response to the outrage, “yes i for one will never think of sean hannity as an impartial deliverer of the news again.” Hannity’s ethic is to defend Trump in all things, with maximum vehemence. How does his personal interest in the Cohen raid conflict with that?
And why doesn’t Williams resign?
Juan Williams = token hire. There could be no other reason this clown is on the air.
Juan Juilliams truly is a moron. I still remember how jubilant many FReepers were when Roger Ailes took pity on him when he was fired by NPR. That was dumb. It didn’t hurt NPR in the slightest and FNC viewers have been stuck with that tool ever since....
So now according to the Leftist Media Complex, aside from it being illegal to speak with Russians, you also need their permission to speak with Lawyers.
Dear Juan Williams, why don’t you disclose that you’re just a whore for the Democrap Party?
This Shaun is what you get for helping a liberal who was fired by another liberal a job? Dont you finally feel stupid now and for the love of god let others talk...
Looks like Hannity is getting a dose of his own medicine he gave Judge Moore — an accusation if evidence of guilt.
Is it now a crime to hire a lawyer?
What's going on?
Do you remember when juan was fired by pbs? He cried all day.. he wanted sympathy... no job... no money for his family.. he whined and cried... he was a sorry soul.
THEN Fox hired him and he lost all his day long modesty.... he lost his day long respect for anyone... he lost the ability to be respectful.. and he’s one loud mouth who insults the Trump voters.. he has no sensibility. he’s totally self absorbed!
For us to live through 8 years of his president... he was/is so blind, it’s nauseating!
We have a Cohen Jooooo collusion you see!
However if Juan and Body Love were with Obama, it was love and raprochement you see...
“And why doesn’t Williams resign?”
Why not just fire him and give his slot to Tyrus from Greg Guttfeld. He’s a bright guy and he’s funny! And his big overstuffed chair would be a hoot on The Five!
Jooooo lawyer to be exact
Hey Juan, how about “It’s none of your f****** business!”
This witch hunt needs to come to a stop. All of this has gone way beyond abuse of authority, and into personal vendetta territory by mueller.
These leftist bastards are trying to destroy the lives of anyone even remotely associated to the President.
If you get fired from NPR, there ain’t no way you are any good. What are these people thinking? So many more moderate black libs out there available
“Is it now a crime to hire a lawyer?”
Bob, you read my mind! That effing Playboy Bunny judge was out of like to force Cohen to provide his name publically.
been waiting a while to lob that one, haven’t you?
Stupid trust in democrats is stupid
Yes, he did... but he has put himself and probably his family, going to bat for Trump! He has not stopped investigating on anything he can, to get the other side indicted. And he didn’t hire an attorney in Cohen.. his name was in the papers they illegally confiscated and the media would like to get Hannity as well as Trump... so they go out and lie about what it was, as they have been doing all along with anything concerning Trump or his voters.
I really enjoyed it when Juan would try to debate Charles Krauthammer. “Kraut” would pound him into the ground with a logical argument that would leave Juan with that DUMB look on his face that was so natural to him. :>)
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