AT&T Inc on Friday ousted its top lobbyist, and the No. 2 wireless carrier’s chief executive officer said in a memo it was a “big mistake” to hire Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, for advice on working with the Trump administration.
AT&T paid Essential Consultants LLC, a firm set up by Cohen, a total of US$600,000 last year for advice on working with the Trump administration.
Cohen and others were hired to help navigate “a wide range of issues,” including AT&T’s proposed US$85 billion merger with Time Warner Inc, the company said in the memo.
The disclosure of AT&T’s relationship with Cohen has turned into a major embarrassment for the telecommunications company as it awaits a US judge’s decision, due on June 12, on whether it can go through with the purchase of Time Warner, a deal that has been denounced by Trump.
It did not hire Cohen to lobby on its behalf, AT&T said, adding that his one-year contract at US$50,000 per month, ran from January through December last year and was limited to consulting and advisory services.
AT&T never asked Cohen to set up meetings with anyone in the Trump administration, and he did not offer to do so, it said.
“To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate, but the fact is our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment,” AT&T chief executive officer Randall Stephenson wrote.
Stephenson said he took responsibility for the Washington team’s failure to vet Cohen.
AT&T’s head lobbyist, Bob Quinn, who oversaw the hiring of Cohen, is retiring, the memo said.
However, two sources familiar with the situation said that Quinn was forced to retire.
The sources wished to remain anonymous because they are not permitted to speak to the media.
Quinn did not respond to a request for comment.
AT&T’s board of directors does not hold Stephenson responsible for the lack of vetting, one source said.
The AT&T payments were first revealed by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who also said a company owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and other corporations paid Essential Consultants for certain services.
Avenatti would not say how he obtained the information.
Drugmaker Novartis on Wednesday said it had a US$1.2 million contract with Cohen’s firm, but soon realized the agreement was a mistake.
Essential Consultants paid US$130,000 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, as part of an agreement that barred her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
Shares of AT&T were up 1.2 percent to US$32.25 at the close of trading on Friday.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure
RSS