Hannity and Cohen
Following up on Sean Hannity’s claim that he discussed real estate questions with Michael Cohen, The Guardian uncovered that Hannity presides over a real estate empire valued at at least $100 million. This is not surprising. Hannity reportedly makes $36 million a year. He says he invests most of his money in real estate. If he’s making that much and investing in real estate, it would be surprising if his portfolio were any smaller.
The list of assets, however, suggests that he has real estate professionals investing his money – again, not surprising. It’s not mainly high profile vanity purchases. It’s a mix of high end homes and income-earning middle class or even low-income apartment properties. It all looks by the books, legal.
Hannity may be a bit of a hypocrite for taking advantage of HUD programs for his investing. But that’s not really what’s important here. Everything suggests Hannity has professionals investing and managing this portfolio of real estate properties. So why would he be seeking the counsel of Michael Cohen? Whatever he claims, there’s very little evidence Cohen has any legal or business acumen or even experience doing this kind of real estate investing – that is to say competent, professional investing for extremely high net worth individuals as opposed to high stakes ‘deals’ and finding purchases for people looking to stash or launder money.
It would be like an extremely wealthy individual with lots of high end wealth management advisors reaching out to a ‘pump and dump’ operator for some extra insights on stock purchases. It does not make sense. Whatever Hannity was seeking Cohen’s counsel about, it’s unlikely it was about this stuff. Highly unlikely.