When attorney Alan Dershowitz scolded Sean Hannity on Fox News Monday night for not previously disclosing his relationship to Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, a third guest on the segment sat silently by without uttering a word: Joe diGenova.
“I do want to say that I really think that you should have disclosed your relationship with Cohen when you talked about him on this show,” Dershowitz said, confronting Hannity as diGenova flashed an uncomfortable pursed-lips glare at the camera.
Of course, diGenova is a Fox News/Hannity regular. Oh, and he’s a principal of the law firm that represents Hannity—d’oh! But diGenova and Cohen aren't the only Fox News guests with a legal connection to Hannity. The Atlantic writes:
On May 25, 2017, KFAQ, a radio station based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, received a cease-and-desist letter signed by two lawyers for Hannity: Victoria Toensing and Jay Alan Sekulow. Toensing’s signature sits above her name and that of her husband Joseph E. diGenova, the members of diGenova and Toensing LLP, and she identifies herself as “Counsel for Sean Hannity,” according to an image of the signature page obtained by The Atlantic. Sekulow is also identified in the letter page as a “Counsel for Sean Hannity.”
Sekulow! As in the sole personal attorney representing Trump in the Russia probe? Well, I'll be darned. And if Hannity's legal entanglements with his guests weren't already damning enough, remember this?
Sekulow recently announced that diGenova and Toensing had been hired to join him [on Team Trump], before reversing course.
Oh, right. So Sekulow and Toensing were Hannity's lawyers and then Sekulow tried to recreate their tag-team magic in the Russia probe on behalf of Trump, but no such luck.
Anyway, Hannity has totally denied actually hiring Cohen as a lawyer and, more specifically, he said that Cohen never handled "any matter" between him and "a third-party." In other words, just because Cohen arranged hush-money payoffs for his other two clients—Trump and the recently resigned RNC deputy finance chair, Elliott Broidy—it doesn't mean Cohen did that for Hannity. Perhaps that's because Hannity’s other lawyers—Toensing and Sekulow—were handling those types of affairs for him. Back to the Atlantic’s radio station tale:
The letter [to the station] was sent in response to accusations against Hannity made by the controversial conservative activist Debbie Schlussel. During an appearance on the Pat Campbell show on KFAQ last April, Schlussel said Hannity had been “creepy” towards her and had invited her to his hotel room.
Hannity responded at the time by calling the allegations “100% false and a complete fabrication,” and said that he had hired lawyers to plan a response.
Wow, another untoward allegation against a higher up at Fox News, defended by one attorney who represents Trump and another Trump tried to hire—whose husband appears regularly on Fox News to do Trump's bidding. (In fact, diGenova's favorite riff of late is urging Trump and/or Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for signing off on the FBI raid of Cohen's quarters.)
Reached by phone on Tuesday, Toensing acknowledged that “at that time” she was acting as Hannity’s lawyer but wouldn’t comment on whether she still represents him.
“I’ve just learned in the press that anybody who is Sean Hannity’s lawyer is going to be blasted so I think this phone call is over,” Toensing said. “I’m wondering what attorney-client privilege means to anybody. I don’t say who my clients are, sometimes I do, and many times, most of the time, I do not.”
Sekulow, diGenova, and Toensing have frequently appeared on Hannity’s program; diGenova appeared on the show as recently as Monday night. Asked for comment, Hannity sent a text consisting of NewsBusters and Daily Caller links to stories about ethical misconduct in the mainstream media and declined to offer further comment. “I don’t have time for these silly questions,” he said.
Ah, everyone's go-to authority on ethics—NewsBusters and the Daily Caller. Hannity also defended himself against Dershowitz's simple plea for honesty Monday night, saying, "I have the right to privacy." In other words, his viewers can rest assured he isn’t giving the slightest consideration to the ethics of keeping them abreast of his incestuous cabal. That's the same message Fox News sent too, declaring Tuesday that Hannity "continues to have our full support."
Birds of a feather.