AT&T CEO: Hiring Michael Cohen Was a ‘Big Mistake’

AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson said the company’s hiring of Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen was  “big mistake,” in a memo obtained by Reuters. The memo, sent out Friday morning, also states that Bob Quinn, AT&T’s head lobbyist and the person who hired Cohen, is retiring. “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.” The memo states that the company signed a one-year contract with Essential Consultants LLC for January through December 2017 at $50,000 a month, and “was limited to consulting and advisory services.” This comes as Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, publicly listed people who paid Essential Consultants and claimed that a company linked to a Russian oligarch may have reimbursed a $130,000 payment made to Daniels—the adult-film star who allegedly had an affair with the president.