AT&T: We made a 'big mistake' paying Michael Cohen for 'insight' into Trump

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen

• Randall Stephenson, the boss of AT&T, addressed the Michael Cohen scandal in a memo to staff on Friday.
• The memo admitted that AT&T made a "big mistake" paying Cohen, President Donald Trump's attorney, for advice on his administration.
• AT&T is one of several companies linked to Cohen, along with pharma giant Novartis and Korea Aerospace Industries.

The CEO of AT&T has told his employees that the company made a "big mistake" hiring Michael Cohen for insider insight into the Trump administration.

In a memo to staff obtained by the Reuters news agency, Randall Stephenson said he made a "serious misjudgment" by handing out up to $600,000 to Cohen via his company, Essential Consultants LLC.

Cohen's political payments, which also came from Novartis, and Korea Aerospace Industries, have been subject of increasing scrutiny in recent weeks and may provoke the attention of investigators.

Stephenson wrote: "Our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged. There is no other way to say it - AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake."

Stephenson took personal responsibility for what he described as a failure in the vetting process which led to Cohen being hired.

AT&T's head lobbyist, Bob Quinn, who oversaw the hiring of Cohen, is retiring, according to the memo.

AT&T said on Tuesday it hired Essential Consultants to advise it on working with the new administration in early 2017, around the time of Trump's inauguration.

"To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate," Stephenson wrote in the memo. "But the fact is our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment."

AT&T did not hire Cohen to lobby on behalf of the company, according to the memo. The distinction could be extremely important if Cohen's activities become subject to criminal investigation.

The one-year contract at $50,000 per month, from January through December 2017, was limited to consulting and advisory services, according to the memo.

The AT&T payments by AT&T were revealed by Michael Avenatti, adult film actress Stormy Daniels' lawyer, who also said a company owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and other corporations had paid Essential Consultants for certain services.

Essential Consultants paid $130,000 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, days before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement that barred her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump. He denies any encounter took place.