How do you reconcile these two remarks....

[usmbguest5318]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

 

[frigidweirdo]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

Well, the guy seemed to get FREE legal advice from Cohen. Maybe because he's Trump's lawyer and Trump was paying for it all.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Two guys setting at a bar drinking adult beverages talking real estate and you idiots want him drawn and quartered... sad little monkeys, all of you...

 

[usmbguest5318]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

Well, the guy seemed to get FREE legal advice from Cohen. Maybe because he's Trump's lawyer and Trump was paying for it all.

Well, the guy seemed to get FREE legal advice from Cohen.

It doesn't seem like to me. Check out the linked video. In it, one'll hear Hannity explicitly state he received no legal advice form Cohen.

Note: I put a link on "legal advice" because what laymen would call "legal advice" and what attorneys call legal advices are often different. That difference is made clear upon one's putting an attorney on retainer or otherwise becoming a client of an attorney.


Correction:

I misspoke. Hannity does say he asked Cohen some legal questions.​

 

[usmbguest5318]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

Well, the guy seemed to get FREE legal advice from Cohen. Maybe because he's Trump's lawyer and Trump was paying for it all.

Well, the guy seemed to get FREE legal advice from Cohen.

It doesn't seem like to me. Check out the linked video. In it, one'll hear Hannity explicitly state he received no legal advice form Cohen.

Note: I put a link on "legal advice" because what laymen would call "legal advice" and what attorneys call legal advices are often different. That difference is made clear upon one's putting an attorney on retainer or otherwise becoming a client of an attorney.

It doesn't seem like to me. Check out the linked video. In it, one'll hear Hannity explicitly state he received no legal advice form Cohen.

My mistake:​

• Hannity does appear to have said he sought legal advice.

 

[The Professor]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

There is nothing to reconcile. Let me explain.

Hannity was a client as that term is legally defined:

"A person who employs or retains an attorney to represent him or her in any legal business; to assist, to counsel, and to defend the individual in legal proceedings; and to appear on his or her behalf in court.

"This term includes a person who divulges confidential matters to an attorney while pursuing professional assistance, regardless of sub-sequent employment of the attorney. This attorney-client relationship is quite complex and extensive in its scope. One of the key aspects of this relationship is confidentiality of communications. A client has the right to require that his or her attorney keep secret any discussion between them during the course of their relationship that pertains to the matters for which the attorney is hired. This protection extends to a person who might have disclosed any confidential matters while seeking aid from an attorney, whether the attorney was employed or not. If, for example, someone is "shopping" for an attorney to handle a Divorce, the person might reveal certain private information to several attorneys, all of whom are expected to keep such communications confidential” (highlights my own).

client

As you can see, a client is described in different ways. Hannity never said he was not a client; instead, he said he sought advice from Cohen but never hired him nor been represented by the man. As the above article shows, one who seeks aid from an attorney is entitled to attorney-client privilege even though the attorney is never paid or hired.

CONCLUSION: Was Hannity a client? Yes he was as that term is legally defined. Did Hannity ever say he was not a client? No, he did not. What he said was that he had never paid for Cohen’s services or been represented by him, but had sought confidential legal advice from him. Is Hannity still entitled to attorney-client privilege? Yes, he is.

 

[usmbguest5318]

The things that strike me about the "Hannity" issue are these:

• The client owns the veil of privilege, not the attorney. It's really hard to say that a genuine attorney-client relationship exists(-ed) between Sean and Cohen when Sean is bending over backwards to minimize the nature of their relationship.
• The bigger problem, for Hannity, is whether he can maintain the appearance of being a journalist. Hannity didn't disclose the relationship with Cohen even as he's on the air ardently defended Cohen and Trump.
  • If Hannity is working as a journalist (in print, Hannity would be a columnist; on the air the same role is called commentator; I just call them editorialists) with regard to his work at Fox, he had an ethical duty to disclose the relationship.
    • Ethics and broadcast journalists
    • Journalism Ethics and the Independent Journalist
      
    • Journalism Ethics
      
    • Handbook of Independent Journalism
  • If, with regard to his work at Fox, Hannity isn't working as a journalist , but is instead working there as an entertainer, he had no duty to disclose.
    • Aside:
      • It wouldn't surprise me to find that Hannity is not classified by Fox as a journalist. The guy doesn't have a college degree. I know one doesn't absolutely have to have one, but it's very uncommon for "big time" journalists not to have one. Also, columnists, correspondents and reporters tend to be people who have a whole lot of training in some sort of subject matter, and/or journalism. Furthermore, the notion that Hannity is, by Fox's HR classifications, viewed as an entertainer rather than as a journalist aligns with the Fox-pioneered approach to news, especially political news and commentary: news as entertainment.
        • News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

Nothing thanks to Mueller and the liberal fuckers.

 

[rightwinger]

Cohen says he has three clients and Hannity is one of them

 

[BULLDOG]

Two guys setting at a bar drinking adult beverages talking real estate and you idiots want him drawn and quartered... sad little monkeys, all of you...

If that's all there was to it, then why did Cohen have so much paperwork with Hannity's name on it? Why did he go to such effort to keep that name from being exposed? If all that paperwork agrees it was nothing but two guys sitting at a bar, that will be the end of it.

 

[usmbguest5318]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

There is nothing to reconcile. Let me explain.

Hannity was a client as that term is legally defined:

"A person who employs or retains an attorney to represent him or her in any legal business; to assist, to counsel, and to defend the individual in legal proceedings; and to appear on his or her behalf in court.

"This term includes a person who divulges confidential matters to an attorney while pursuing professional assistance, regardless of sub-sequent employment of the attorney. This attorney-client relationship is quite complex and extensive in its scope. One of the key aspects of this relationship is confidentiality of communications. A client has the right to require that his or her attorney keep secret any discussion between them during the course of their relationship that pertains to the matters for which the attorney is hired. This protection extends to a person who might have disclosed any confidential matters while seeking aid from an attorney, whether the attorney was employed or not. If, for example, someone is "shopping" for an attorney to handle a Divorce, the person might reveal certain private information to several attorneys, all of whom are expected to keep such communications confidential” (highlights my own).

client

As you can see, a client is described in different ways. Hannity never said he was not a client; instead, he said he sought advice from Cohen but never hired him nor been represented by the man. As the above article shows, one who seeks aid from an attorney is entitled to attorney-client privilege even though the attorney is never paid or hired.

CONCLUSION: Was Hannity a client? Yes he was as that term is legally defined. Did Hannity ever say he was not a client? No, he did not. What he said was that he had never paid for Cohen’s services or been represented by him, but had sought confidential legal advice from him. Is Hannity still entitled to attorney-client privilege? Yes, he is.

That's good information. TY for sharing.

That said, the client, not the attorney, owns the privacy right. If the client, in this case, Hannity, is "falling all over himself" to assert that he was not a client of Cohen's and they had no such relationship, it's hard for anyone to in turn say the client and the attorney had an attorney-client relationship and are entitled to the veil of secrecy between two such parties.

 

[midcan5]

Sean Hannity is a right wing snowflake and Cohen who talks often with Donnie John was feeding Hannity's emotional breakdown over the Mueller probe. The sky is always falling for conservatives, when it isn't falling they are not happy. It is a personality trait - see quote below. Trump represents power for many right wingers, odd as he has done nothing courageous in life unless we count vagina grabbing and adultery as strengths.

"Hirschman draws his examples from three successive waves of reactive thought that arose in response to the liberal ideas of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, to democratization and the drive toward universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, and to the welfare state in our own century. In each case he identifies three principal arguments invariably used: (1) the perversity thesis, whereby any action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order is alleged to result in the exact opposite of what was intended; (2) the futility thesis, which predicts that attempts at social transformation will produce no effects whatever—will simply be incapable of making a dent in the status quo; (3) the jeopardy thesis, holding that the cost of the proposed reform is unacceptable because it will endanger previous hard-won accomplishments. He illustrates these propositions by citing writers across the centuries from Alexis de Tocqueville to George Stigler, Herbert Spencer to Jay Forrester, Edmund Burke to Charles Murray. Finally, in a lightning turnabout, he shows that progressives are frequently apt to employ closely related rhetorical postures, which are as biased as their reactionary counterparts. For those who aspire to the genuine dialogue that characterizes a truly democratic society, Hirschman points out that both types of rhetoric function, in effect, as contraptions designed to make debate impossible. In the process, his book makes an original contribution to democratic thought." The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy by Albert O. Hirschman

 

[ChrisL]

I love how losers posting (who don't even have the "courage" to use their own pictures as their avis) on the net have the nerve to judge another person's "courage."

 

[ChrisL]

There is nothing more "courageous" than anonymous forum posters. ROFL!

 

[ChrisL]

There is a thing called attorney/client privilege. As a United States citizen who is equally protected under the laws of this nation, Mr. Hannity owes you absolutely no explanation. Deal with it.

 

[The Professor]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

There is nothing to reconcile. Let me explain.

Hannity was a client as that term is legally defined:

"A person who employs or retains an attorney to represent him or her in any legal business; to assist, to counsel, and to defend the individual in legal proceedings; and to appear on his or her behalf in court.

"This term includes a person who divulges confidential matters to an attorney while pursuing professional assistance, regardless of sub-sequent employment of the attorney. This attorney-client relationship is quite complex and extensive in its scope. One of the key aspects of this relationship is confidentiality of communications. A client has the right to require that his or her attorney keep secret any discussion between them during the course of their relationship that pertains to the matters for which the attorney is hired. This protection extends to a person who might have disclosed any confidential matters while seeking aid from an attorney, whether the attorney was employed or not. If, for example, someone is "shopping" for an attorney to handle a Divorce, the person might reveal certain private information to several attorneys, all of whom are expected to keep such communications confidential” (highlights my own).

client

As you can see, a client is described in different ways. Hannity never said he was not a client; instead, he said he sought advice from Cohen but never hired him nor been represented by the man. As the above article shows, one who seeks aid from an attorney is entitled to attorney-client privilege even though the attorney is never paid or hired.

CONCLUSION: Was Hannity a client? Yes he was as that term is legally defined. Did Hannity ever say he was not a client? No, he did not. What he said was that he had never paid for Cohen’s services or been represented by him, but had sought confidential legal advice from him. Is Hannity still entitled to attorney-client privilege? Yes, he is.

That's good information. TY for sharing.

That said, the client, not the attorney, owns the privacy right. If the client, in this case, Hannity, is "falling all over himself" to assert that he was not a client of Cohen's and they had no such relationship, it's hard for anyone to in turn say the client and the attorney had an attorney-client relationship and are entitled to the veil of secrecy between two such parties.

I'm not aware of Hannity ever saying he wasn't a client. To the best of my knowledge, this is what was reported:

“Hannity, 56, said on Monday that he had never paid for Cohen’s services or been represented by him, but had sought confidential legal advice from him. The conservative host often uses his weeknight broadcast on Fox News to defend the president against what he sees as biased attacks by the media. Sometimes Trump praises Hannity in return.”

Fox's Hannity revealed as mystery client of Trump's personal lawyer

Since Hannity sought legal advice from Cohen, he is a client by definition and any communications between the two is subject to attorney-client privilege. At any rate, the argument at this point is purely academic in that the only information provided by Cohen was Hannity's name. Generally, the name of a client is not subject to attorney-client privilege

“Generally, a client's identity is not protected under the attorney-client privilege. Jurisdictions use various rationales as a basis for this rule. Some courts simply don't consider a client's identity as privileged information. Other courts hold that a client must be named when invoking the privilege in order to establish the attorney-client relationship. Regardless of the rationale, most jurisdictions adhere to the general rule. However, the rule is not without exceptions. For instance, if so much information regarding an attorney-client relationship has been revealed that disclosure of the client's identity would expose the entire communication, an attorney may refuse to disclose his client's identity.”

https://www.law.ua.edu/pubs/jlp_files/issues_files/vol08/vol08art11.pdf

 

[BULLDOG]

There is nothing more "courageous" than anonymous forum posters. ROFL!

The only thing I can think of that might be more brave would be a spoiled rich kid who dodged military service by claiming a bone spur, but he can't remember which heel it was in, and who claimed he really was in the military because he went to a private school that wore uniforms. Of course you can't ignore his bravery as he claimed dodging STDs was his own personal Vietnam, or the great personal danger he said he was in when he visited the Texas border recently. Now that's what I call courage.

 

[Stormy Daniels]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

It's very simple. Cohen lied. First he said he had 10 clients, or something like that. When the judge pressed him, he eventually reduced the number to three. When the judge pressed further, he said his other client didn't want to be revealed. When the judge pressed further, he said it wouldn't be fair to the client because it would be publicly embarrassing. When pressed further, he asked if he could reveal the name under seal. When the judge pressed further he danced around like a toddler who need to use the potty, with the same look on his face as the toddler when she tries to think of a lie on the spot to avoid admitting that she wet her pants. And finally, when Cohen spit out Hannity's name he sounded so timid and unsure it seemed like he was asking a question.

 

[Mac1958]

Was Hannity ever officially a client of this guy?

Yes or no?

Seems like a pretty straightforward question.
.

 

[BlackSand]

1. Michael Cohen's lawyers averred in court that Sean Hannity is one of Michael Cohen's clients.
2. Sean Hannity asserts that he was not at all Cohen's client.
   

   Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.
   -- Sean Hannity

   
   Hannity: Cohen has never represented me - CNN Video
   • No invoice. No legal fees paid. No legal advice given.

What is attorney-client privilege?

What do you plan to gain from your desire to reconcile the comments?

If in fact Sean Hannity is/was a client of Cohen ... And if in fact it has anything to do with Muller's investigation ...
Then Special Counsel Muller would have seized files regarding Sean Hannity from Cohen when his office was raided.

Special Counsel Muller will tell you what you should believe about the relationship between Hannity and Cohen if he thinks it means anything.

.​