Randall Stephenson, the chief executive officer of AT&T, wrote in a company-wide letter to staff on Friday, May 11, that the telecom giant made “a serious misjudgment” in its decision to hire President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen as a consultant last year.
“Our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged,” Stephenson wrote. “There is no other way to say it—AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.”
The letter said that while the deal with Cohen was “done according to the law” and was “entirely legitimate,” the association with Cohen was “a serious misjudgment.”
Trump didn’t directly address AT&T’s payment of US$600,000 to Cohen’s firm for advice in 2017, but the president did tweet late Friday that his administration has been opposed to AT&T’s merger with Time Warner in an apparent defense of the company receiving any preferential treatment.
Full Content: Reuters
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