T AT&T Inc

By Drew FitzGerald 

AT&T Inc. boss Randall Stephenson said it was a mistake to hire Trump attorney Michael Cohen and ousted the telecom's giant's top Washington executive after his office paid Mr. Cohen $600,000 last year.

The company told employees Friday in an internal memo that Senior Executive Vice President Bob Quinn was retiring, but people familiar with the matter said the policy chief was forced to leave.

"Our reputation has been damaged," Mr. Stephenson wrote in Friday's memo announcing Mr. Quinn's departure. "There is no other way to say it -- AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake."

Mr. Quinn, a lawyer who joined AT&T in 1993 and took over the D.C. office in October 2016, didn't respond to requests for comment. His office hired Mr. Cohen shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration and agreed to pay $50,000 a month for "insights" into the new administration.

Mr. Stephenson said the company's general counsel, David McAtee, will take over the company's Washington operations.

"David's number one priority is to ensure every one of the individuals and firms we use in the political arena are people who share our high standards and who we would be proud to have associated with AT&T," Mr. Stephenson wrote.

Manhattan federal prosecutors are investigating Mr. Cohen to determine whether he violated any laws in his efforts to raise cash and conceal negative information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.

AT&T said this week that it hired a company created by Mr. Cohen in January 2017, when it was seeking government approval for an $85 billion takeover of Time Warner Inc., which was announced in October 2016.

Among other goals, AT&T tasked Mr. Cohen with assisting its efforts to secure approval of the deal, which Mr. Trump had criticized during the campaign.

AT&T said this week it had been contacted in late 2017 by special counsel Robert Mueller's office about Mr. Cohen and cooperated with Mr. Mueller's probe into foreign interference in the presidential election.

The company paid Mr. Cohen through the same vehicle, Essential Consultants LLC, that he used in October 2016 to direct $130,000 to the adult-film actress known professionally as Stormy Daniels to stay silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006. Messrs. Trump and Cohen deny any encounter with Ms. Daniels.

AT&T told employees Wednesday that Mr. Cohen didn't perform legal or lobbying work for the company, adding "it was not until the following month in January 2018 that the media first reported, and AT&T first became aware of, the current controversy surrounding Cohen."

It is unclear what AT&T got from Mr. Cohen, a real estate lawyer who worked at the Trump Organization and served as Mr. Trump's personal attorney. AT&T said Mr. Cohen didn't arrange any meetings for the company with the president and that the contract ended after December 2017.

The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit in November 2017 to block AT&T's proposed purchase of Time Warner. The two sides have spent the past two months battling in federal court. The deal's outcome is now in the hands of a federal judge, who is expected to rule on June 12.

AT&T said its contract with Mr. Cohen ended after December 2017.

AT&T is no stranger to Washington politics. It has one of the largest lobbying operations in the capital and its political-action committee is one of the country's top corporate contributors. AT&T spent more than $16 million on federal lobbying each of the last two years.

In the 2016 election, AT&T's political-action committee gave a total of $4.7 million to hundreds of candidates and groups in both parties. It was also a major donor to both political conventions, giving $1.5 million to the host committee for the Democratic convention and $4.2 million to the host committee for the Republican convention.

Mr. Quinn had climbed the ranks in the company's Washington operations, handling regulatory matters before the Federal Communications Commission. He took over the top job shortly before Mr. Trump's election.

His predecessor, Jim Cicconi, left AT&T in August 2016 after publicly backing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. Mr. Cicconi, a former White House aide under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, had run AT&T's public-policy operations for more than a decade and was previously the company's general counsel.

Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 11, 2018 12:35 ET (16:35 GMT)

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