Sean Hannity claims he went to Michael Cohen for minor real estate advice

Sean Hannity promised to set the record straight on the “Michael Cohen hysteria” during his Fox News program Monday night, but he instead repeated his earlier statement that Cohen had “never represented me in any legal matter.”

“I never retained his services, I never received an invoice, I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees,” Hannity recited on his program. “I did have occasional brief conversations with Michael Cohen — he’s a great attorney — about legal questions I had, or I was looking for input and perspective.”

Hannity added that his discussion with Cohen “never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone,” and that none of his interactions with Cohen involved a third party.

“My questions exclusively almost focused on real estate,” Hannity concluded. “I said many times on my radio show, ‘I hate the stock market, I prefer real estate.’ Michael knows real estate.”

Despite promising to put “wild speculation” to rest, Hannity basically just repeated his earlier statement — with the added nugget that he allegedly consulted with Cohen on real estate. He didn’t give any details on what that real estate advice might have been.

A federal judge unmasked Hannity as longtime Trump attorney Cohen’s mysterious third client during a court hearing on Monday. Cohen had filed a lawsuit to prevent the FBI from searching through documents it had seized in an April 9 raid. In court filings, Cohen had listed Trump and Elliott Broidy, the Republican National Committee deputy finance chair, as two of his three clients but left one client’s name secret. When the judge ordered Cohen to make it public, Hannity’s name popped up.

Hannity, who’s taken the side of team Trump in the Cohen saga, provided little new information on his show — but allowed time to chastise the media for its reaction to the revelation that he was Cohen’s client.

“Predictably, without knowing all or frankly any of facts, the media went absolutely insane,” Hannity said. He proved his point, apparently, by showing a cable news supercut of hosts saying his name:

Hannity has spent the past week echoing the president’s line that the Cohen raid is part of the Robert Mueller “witch hunt,” without revealing his own relationship with Cohen. It’s something even fellow Trump defender and lawyer Alan Dershowitz scolded Hannity about on his program Monday night, telling the host that he should have disclosed his relationship with Cohen to viewers. Hannity replied that the relationship was minimal, having to do with real estate and “nothing political.”

“You should have said that,” Dershowitz replied. “And that would have been fair to say, that it was minimal.”