Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Sean Hannity Revealed As Michael Cohen’s Third Client — He Says It Wasn’t A Hush Money Deal

Michael Cohen revealed that his third legal client since 2017 is right-wing Fox News host Sean Hannity.

The other two clients were President Trump and Elliott Broidy, both of whom involved hush money deals over illicit affairs.

Cohen revealed Hannity’s name after U.S. Judge Kimba Wood ordered him to do so.

Hannity ssid there was nothing newsworthy in his relationship with Cohen — and denied Cohen’s claim that he was a client.

“Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees,” Hannity said. “I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions.”

“To be absolutely clear, they never involved any matter between me and a third party,” he added.

Cohen, Trump’s fiercely loyal and pugnacious lawyer, was in court to ask a judge to limit the ability of federal prosecutors to review documents seized from him last week through a warrant as part of a criminal investigation.

Cohen has argued that some of the seized documents are protected by attorney-client privilege or otherwise unconnected to the investigation, but Judge Kimba Wood rejected his efforts to mask a client Cohen had said wanted to avoid publicity.

“I understand if he doesn’t want his name out there, but that’s not enough under the law,” Wood said, before ordering a lawyer for Cohen to disclose the name.

Sean Hannity is a conservative television host known for passionately advocating for Trump on his Fox News show.—With Reuters

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.