Robert Balin and Kimba Wood: Outing Sean Hannity

A note about this: Judge Wood was prepared to let Ryan give her the name of Cohen’s third client under seal. At that point, an attorney for the NYT and CNN approached the podium and convinced her that the press (&public) should know. She agreed. He played pivotal role here. https://t.co/nbJUaAw4Ys

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) April 17, 2018

The Outrageous Outing of Sean Hannity, Cont’d https://t.co/HX45qPPHlp via @AndrewCMcCarthy pic.twitter.com/cvmemafM9s

— National Review (@NRO) April 19, 2018

Andrew McCarthy writes:

The court’s order that Hannity’s name be disclosed in open court violated longstanding, judicially endorsed standards against identifying uncharged persons in legal proceedings attendant to criminal investigations.

Forget about evidence of wrongdoing. There is not even a suggestion that Hannity is involved in any crimes. He is a longtime friend of Cohen’s. He says they’ve had some informal legal discussions about such matters as real estate — and as any lawyer will tell you, informal discussions with non-lawyer friends are common. Hannity insists, however, that he has never retained Cohen to represent him in any legal matter, and has never paid him or received an invoice from him. There is no public evidence to contradict this, and no suggestion that Cohen has previously represented himself as Hannity’s attorney.

...Perhaps you think this is poetic justice for Hannity, who is not above using flimsy evidence to lambaste political opponents and Trump critics. But as a very wise federal judge once admonished me, courts “don’t do poetic justice, they do prosaic justice” — the routine, workaday adherence to the principles and standards on which the rule of law depends.

Under that kind of justice, courts protect uncharged people from being identified in public proceedings in connection with criminal investigations. The failure of the court and the government lawyers to enforce that standard just adds fuel to the fiery contention that, where President Trump is involved, investigations are driven by politics, not law enforcement.

Witch hunt.