Man, that Sean Hannity is a sneaky, lying snake. He “maybe” only slid Trump’s “fixer-attorney” ten dollars to hear Cohen’s views on “real estate”. It’s becoming very clear now that “real estate” means “money laundering” with Trump, et al.
Hannity has got about 25 “shell companies” out of the state of Georgia that “invest in real estate”, has been hawking his “Financial Planning Fridays” but hidden his ties to this “financial services company”, and has been getting sweet, sweet loans from HUD (Oh, was Sean a big supporter of Ben Carson to head HUD?), all while being an “opinionator” on some days, and a " journalist" on others. He’s also a “client” but also “not a client” of Trump’s “fixer slash attorney” Cohen.
This group of vipers has had one goal- to loot America and Americans while the looting is good!
Nothing in that article suggests money-laundering. He’s got various loans and then interviewed people connected with them without disclosing his interest. That’s a question of journalistic ethics.
I think Sean Hannity is a carbuncle on the American butt-cheek, shouldn’t be allowed within 50 miles of a news studio, and would look fabulous wearing an orange jumpsuit and picking up Big Mac wrappers and used condoms on the side of a highway, but nothing I’ve read so far suggests that any laws were broken.
No laws broken, and while one can argue the ethics of his being a foreclosure vulture, the reality is that somebody’s going to buy those foreclosed homes, so it might as well be him.
But (1) here’s a guy who loves to pose as a regular guy up against the elites. I think owning 870 houses kinda knocks a hole in that.
And (2) he was going to Michael Cohen for real estate advice? Bullshit. With a portfolio that extensive, he already had real estate lawyers and real estate investment professionals on tap. (Topnotch ones, I’m sure - per the article, Hannity earns something like $36M/year, so he doesn’t have to skimp.)
From the Guardian article:
You may recall that the Solyndra “scandal,” which Hannity spent years trying to make a big deal out of, was ostensibly all about federal loan guarantees to politically connected allies of the White House. Well, Hannity is a politically connected ally of *this *White House, and here he is getting an increased loan guarantee from this Administration. Funny, that.
And you know what? A guy like Hannity, friend of the (white) working class and all that, could have had an entirely different sort of involvement in foreclosed properties. He could have bought them for cheap (which he was doing anyway), then rented them back to their previous owners if they were interested and could afford it, giving them an option to repurchase them over the next few years if they could get back on their feet during that time.
He’d probably make only a little bit of money that way rather than a metric ton of it, but he’d be helping out the sort of people he supposedly cares about. It’s not like you need to make a ton of money on the side when you get $36M up front.
This might actually end up being Hannity’s Waterloo, particularly as more and more details of his private business dealings come out, as I suspect they will.
Being exposed as being a part of Trump’s circle is one thing, but that’s a survivable offense in an era in which Trumpism has hijacked the conservative right. What’s much less survivable is using BIG GOVERNMENT, TAXPAYER funding to set up a real estate business. The Freedom Caucus folk are not ones to shy away from a confrontation with their fellow conservatives and I can’t imagine that they’re too please with what they’ve seen of Hannity’s real estate work.
And given Hannity’s close proximity to what is basically a global criminal enterprise in the Trumps, it wouldn’t surprise me if at least one of his dealings catches the attention of federal investigators.
They can rationalize anything. “Yeah, the system sucks and we need to get rid of it for MAGA, but as long as it’s there you might as well take advantage of it, like Hannity and Trump are both smart enough to do” and so forth.