Hiring Donald Trump's personal attorney was a 'big mistake', AT&T's chief executive admits

The CEO of telecommunications giant AT&T has said the company made a “big mistake” in hiring Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen for political advice.

“Our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment”, CEO Randall Stephenson wrote in a memo to staff.

Businesses that enlisted the political counsel of Mr Cohen are scrambling to respond to a document, released by the lawyer who is representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Mr Cohen and Donald Trump, that alleges millions of dollars worth of “suspicious financial transactions” flowing through an account controlled by Mr Cohen (an attorney representing Mr Cohen has not responded to a request for comment).

Among the transactions detailed were payments from AT&T to Mr Cohen’s firm Essential Consultants. AT&T confirmed that it engaged the company in early 2017 to help understand the new administration, agreeing to a $600,000 (£443,000) one-year contract. It said Essential and Mr Cohen did not do any lobbying work.

In his memo, Mr Stephenson said the company had not done anything to violate the law. But he said “the vetting process had clearly failed” in hiring Mr Cohen, who has been beset by legal enquiries in recent months.

“Our company has been in the headlines for al the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged”, Mr Stephenson wrote.

A day earlier, pharmaceutical company Novartis revealed that it had paid Mr Cohen $1.2m (£886,000) for a year-long contract despite only meeting with him once.

Both Novartis and AT&T said they had been contacted about their transactions with Mr Cohen by the team of special counsel Robert Mueller, which is investigating Russian interference in the presidential election and potential linkages to the Trump campaign.

Novartis concluded after a single meeting that Mr Cohen would not be able to furnish hoped-for healthcare expertise, and AT&T noted in its statement that neither party brought up a meeting with Trump administration officials. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said those examples demonstrated that Mr Cohen had not swayed the president.

“This further proves the president is not going to be influenced by special interest. This is the definition of draining the swamp, something the President talked about repeatedly during the campaign”, Sanders said.

The attorney who released the document alleging suspicious financial transactions, Michael Avenatti, is representing Ms Daniels in her lawsuit seeking to nullify a nondisclosure agreement that bars Ms Daniels from speaking about an alleged affair with Mr Trump (the president and the White House deny an affair occurred).

A prominent feature of the transaction with Ms Daniels - a $130,000 (£96,000) payment that Mr Cohen acknowledged facilitating, and that Mr Trump was revealed to have reimbursed - has also drawn the attention of federal investigators.

FBI agents raided Mr Cohen’s home and office last month and seized documents devices and documents that shed more light on the payment. Mr Cohen has moved to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid self-incrimination in Ms Daniels’ suit, citing the related criminal investigation.