Today's New York Times’ “Planet Fox” bombshell provides a hint as to why Michael Cohen named Sean Hannity as one of his clients last year: possibly to hide how the two worked to keep damaging information about Trump mistresses and employment behavior from the public.

Before he turned against Trump, attorney Cohen named Hannity as one of his three clients, thus claiming an attorney-client privilege over material he wanted withheld from prosecutorial scrutiny. Since that was an obvious surprise to Hannity, who has both waffled and denied ever being a client of Cohen’s, it raised the obvious question, what was Cohen trying to conceal?

Now, we may have at least part of an answer. From the Times report:

The Fox host had effectively been a member of [Trump’s] campaign team, for instance pressing Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to be on the lookout for former girlfriends and employees who might make trouble for the candidate ahead of the election, two people familiar with the interactions told us. (Hannity, through a Fox representative, denies having done so.)

Since Hannity finds nothing not to adore about the Liar in Chief and is quite the liar, himself, I would not take his third-party denial very seriously. Not only does the Times’ reporting seems well-sourced, let’s not forget that Fox has a history of enabling Hannity’s unethical behavior.

The big question is, what, if anything, did Hannity do with Cohen regarding Trump’s former girlfriends and employees? Was Hannity’s exhortation merely a one-time, casual warning or was there more involvement in protecting Trump? Did Hannity play any role in the Stormy Daniels and/or Karen McDougal payouts that are being looked at as criminal activity in federal court? What else did Hannity do behind the scenes to help Trump in 2016?

And does any of this have anything to do with Hannity’s overt efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation?

Stay tuned.

(Hannity image via screen grab)