UPDATE: AT&T CEO: Hiring Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was 'a big mistake'

[BumRushDaShow]

Last edited Fri May 11, 2018, 10:26 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: Washington Post


Randall Stephenson, chief executive officer of AT&T Inc. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

AT&T's chief executive said Friday that the company made a "serious misjudgment" to seek advice from President Trump's personal attorney and announced that its top lobbying executive in Washington would be leaving the firm.

"There is no other way to say it -- AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake," AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson wrote in a companywide internal email.

The email comes after revelations that AT&T agreed to pay $600,000 to Cohen last year in exchange for advice on how to approach the Trump administration. Internal AT&T documents, obtained by The Washington Post on Thursday, outlined how Cohen was expected to provide guidance on matters facing the company at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department, specifically mentioning AT&T's $85 billion Time Warner merger.

The departing executive, Bob Quinn, who is AT&T's senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Quinn, who has been in his position since 2016, originally started with the Bell system as an operator for Illinois Bell in 1980, before AT&T was broken up by the Justice Department in a landmark antitrust action four years later.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/11/att-ceo-hiring-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-was-a-big-mistake/?utm_term=.b1c783eba009

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No it wasn't. They had something they wanted and they paid for it. Problem is the person they "paid" didn't deliver fast enough.

Original story -

by Washington Post Staff May 11 at 9:42 AM

Seeking advice from Cohen on the Trump administration was a "serious misjudgment," AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson told employees Friday in a company-wide internal email. Stephenson said he takes responsibility for failing to vet Cohen fully.

In a supplemental document linked from the email, Stephenson explained that Cohen approached the company offering insight on the administration's "key players, their priorities and how they think."

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/11/att-ceo-hiring-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-was-a-big-mistake/?utm_term.9a660e208d09&wpisrcal_economy%2Fbusiness__alert-politics--alert-economy&wpmk1

[Americanno]

1. No shit Sherlock

He is sorry they got caught.

[deminks]

2. And their chief lobbyist, the one who hired Cohen, is 'retiring'.

AT&’s head lobbyist, Bob Quinn, who oversaw the hiring of Cohen, is retiring, according to the memo.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-daniels-at-t-exclusive/exclusive-att-ceo-says-cohen-payments-big-mistake-chief-lobbyist-retiring-idUSKBN1IC1L6?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Funny but Novartis did the same with their CEO

except they discarded him before the shit hit the fan.

[SWBTATTReg]

4. AT&T mess-up w/ Cohen? You think? This was a big NO NO from a corporate policy ...

perspective at AT&T, so I hope someone is held accountable (don't need to fire them, but reprimand instead). The company pushes PACs (employee) and generally stays out of political headwinds, other than those efforts related to its' business interests.

Cohen is also at fault, for paying to play...

[olegramps]

9. It was a poor attempt to respond to Trump's obvious hatred of CNN for reporting the truth.

This whole affair is basically attributable to the bastard in the White House. He is the living personification of evil. AT&T's attempts to counteract him was at best a fiasco. God help this nation. We are in serious trouble.

[Achilleaze]

5. "We acted like republican grifters." - AT & T

"Because that's who we are." - AT & T

[lark]

6. Big lie by the oligarchs at AT&T.

They want the merger and this was their way of paying for their objective and they got burned.

[Botany]

7. The mistake was that ATT was caught paying bribes to Trump's lawyer aka fixer.

n/t

[Turbineguy]

8. Yeah! We know!

[dawnie51]

10. So Cohen was freelancing......

he had little to no influence with anyone in DC. This was a grift from the jump, and he certainly learned the grift from the master. Unfortunately, Dump really hates people making money off him, without him getting his cut. So Cohen is well and truly screwed. His only option to avoid the worst of his stupid ass deeds is to bend over for Mueller. Dump will see him in hell before he lifts a finger for him.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. THIS

Grifters don't like when other grifters grift their grift.

Or in old-fashioned terms - swindlers gotta swindle.

[SWBTATTReg]

11. When will people learn? Once RUMP has used someone ...

he'll dump them at the next convenient time and use someone else. Before long, he's not going to find anybody else except the worse at the bottom of the barrel, true scumbags all.

RUMP is a user...plain and simple.

[asiliveandbreathe]

13. Randall, a Big MISTAKE?? - From a year ago?? - I spent 30 years at one of the

best companies evah......once, AT&T had integrity, a decision to spend $600,000 by anyone, was massaged - reviewed by corp. lawyers, signed off by top execs....me thinks the board of directors, and share holders have to be held accountable.

Of course, SBC bought the AT&T symbol..too bad they didn't buy into our AT&T values....I am disgusted...sorry Randall - you have to go...a lot of people hold ATT shares - and the employees, and retirees, deserve to be protected....

Clean this up from the top down -

I just looked up Randall Stephenson - OMG - he is an SBC jerk....In 2004, he was named chief operating officer SBC.....

From my experience during the AT&T push to offer local service, many years after divestiture, 96-98 time frame - SBC was one of the companies we had to pass thru for our order completion...I understood Market share and SBC moved into defense mode - they (SBC) would launch our orders into the unknown.....so many stories, so little space...

[vlyons]

14. ya think?

But they would do it again, if they thoght they wouldn't get caught, or if they could actually hire a real lobbyist.

Wait a minute! Doesn't AT&T already have a slew of K-street lobbyists in DC?

[Chakaconcarne]

15. Spotlighting this will hopefully take any and all future P2P opportunities from Trump.

..or at least make it a lot harder.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. Nahhh

They'll just hide it better. Too much money to be made.

[thesquanderer]

16. re: "failing to vet Cohen fully"

Yes, they failed to determine whether or not Cohen could actually deliver on what they were bribing him to do.

[matt819]

18. If an American company had done this in a foreign country. . .

the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act would apply.

Surely there's a statute or two in the US that would apply to what AT&T did that would involve some white collar white guys to be indicted.

[LudwigPastorius]

19. So, they got caught this one time.

The money to Cohen and Trump is probably a drop in the bucket to all the other money they funnel into Congress in the form of "consulting and advisory" payments.

[rockfordfile]

22. That's it they got caught. Crooks.

[MGKrebs]

20. So it was a mistake NOW...

now that it has come to light that you were basically funding GOP hookers and probably Russian election interference too.

[Auggie]

21. Hit them where it hurts -- boycott their business if possible

[rockfordfile]

23. He was with trump at the boy scout's meeting.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Kick (nt)