In May of 2018, when it was revealed that telecom giant AT&T had made payments for some sort of unspecified political help to Michael Cohen, who was then Donald Trump’s lawyer and “fixer,” throughout 2017, reports came out that those payments ended in December of that year—the same month that the Federal Communications Commission voted to lift net neutrality regulations.
Now, with the release of previously sealed documents from the FBI investigation of Cohen—which were made public Thursday under orders from a federal judge—it appears that the timing of when AT&T ceased its payments to Cohen may have been something more than coincidence.
According to a report on the document release by The Daily Beast, one of the policies for which AT&T paid for Cohen’s “assistance and advice” was, in fact, net neutrality.
The Washington Post has previously reported that AT&T sought Cohen’s help with the company’s then-proposed mega-merger with the Time Warner Corporation. But the seeming connection between AT&T’s interest in abolishing net neutrality and the payments to Cohen remained unknown.
The one-year contract with Cohen paid the now-jailed former Trump crony $50,000 per month, but in an internal memo, AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson described the deal with Cohen as a “serious misjudgment.” AT&T’s top Washington lobbyist then departed the telecom giant, according to an ABC News report.
The payments to Cohen were first revealed by Michael Avenatti, who was then the lawyer for AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels. Avenatti obtained documents showing that Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg had funneled money to Cohen—money that, Avenatti speculated, may have been compensation for Cohen fronting a $130,000 hush money payoff to Daniels on Trump’s behalf, as AVN.com reported.
Once the Vekselberg payments to Cohen were confirmed by other media outlets, there came confirmation of payments to Cohen by other entities, including AT&T and pharmaceutical giant Novartis, according to the Washington Post.
Net neutrality rules prevent telecom providers, such as AT&T, from slowing or blocking some internet traffic while giving traffic from preferred sources speedy passage through the digital network. The FCC’s repeal of the Obama-era rules took effect on June 11 of last year.
Photo By The Circus / Wikimedia Commons
