MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said she was “struggling not to laugh” after it was revealed that Fox News host Sean Hannity was Michael Cohen’s previously unnamed third client.
“I still am struggling not to laugh. This has been a very weird day in the news,” Maddow said on MSNBC.
{mosads}“One of the anchors at the major pro-Trump news network has had an undisclosed relationship with the president’s lawyer all this time, while Fox has not told that to its audience and while Mr. Hannity and Mr. Cohen have apparently spent considerable effort trying to keep that relationship secret. What? That’s just lurid.”
Maddow also said the situation is “all nuts.”
“But I will tell you, it is an odd little bit of comfort that in court, even in a case this crazy, it at least all gets sorted out in a sort of orderly fashion,” she said.
A lawyer representing Cohen told a federal judge Monday that Cohen’s previously unnamed client was Hannity.
Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, appeared in court Monday in connection with FBI raids last week of his office, home and hotel room.
His lawyer argued that Cohen’s legal team or a court-appointed attorney should be able to review the materials seized in the raids to determine whether certain documents are protected by attorney–client privilege.
Hannity downplayed his interactions with Cohen, saying the attorney had never formally represented him in legal proceedings.
“I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective,” Hannity tweeted, adding that those conversations “dealt almost exclusively about real estate.”
Last week, federal agents reportedly seized financial records, communications between Trump and Cohen and materials related to Cohen’s payment of two women who have alleged they had affairs with the president more than a decade ago.