.@jaketapper: The judge forced Michael Cohen to admit in court he has a third client. And the third client is Sean Hannity.
Go home 2018, you’re drunk. https://t.co/7McUZSjki8 pic.twitter.com/rXkx91hxCI
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) April 16, 2018
CNN host Jake Tapper on Monday opened his show “The Lead” with exasperation that President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen’s previously undisclosed client has been revealed as Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“The judge forced Michael Cohen to admit in court that he has a third client and the third client is Sean Hannity,” Tapper said at the start of his show. “Go home 2018, you’re drunk.”
An attorney representing Cohen, whose office and hotel room were raided by the FBI a week ago, made the announcement in court on Monday after a federal judge ordered the identity of the client to be revealed.
{mosads}Hannity — who was minutes away from beginning his radio show when the announcement was made — said in a statement that Cohen has never represented him and that he never retained him or paid legal fees.
“I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective,” Hannity wrote in the statement. “I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear, they never involved any matter between me and a third party.”
Hannity is an outspoken defender of Trump and is known to communicate frequently with the president.
Cohen paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement, which she says was meant to silence her about an affair she had with Trump.
The FBI raided Cohen’s hotel room and office earlier this month, partly on a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Federal prosecutors are also investigating Cohen’s use of a private company to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with and was impregnated by Elliott Broidy, the former deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.