This is more what I’m thinking of: not privileged, but still subject to a duty of confidentiality which the Court can choose to respect, if the clients are not closely tied to the matter before the court.
Remember that the judge offered to take the information in writing. It was counsel who chose to speak it out loud in open court.
I thought it was posted up-thread that once counsel for the media said it should be made public that the judge directed it be spoken, not written?
I think you answered your own question: it is the judges business because someone has to run the hearing. Having the judge make decisions about Person X without knowing who Person X is and how he/she relates to the case makes the job very difficult to impossible. In rereading your post, you commented about the importance of “how Hannity covered anything”. I agree that isn’t the judge’s business. But the matter before the judge is the status of Hannity vis-a-vis Cohen. If I didn’t get your point I apologize, but I am still unsure what you are trying to say.
Now, on to what I think you meant-what business is it of the public to know that Hannity is involved. Well, he is a public figure. And as many others have said, the default is that all the information possible be made public. The judge gave the possibility of keeping his name private serious consideration.
Well, what a coincidence. A Clinton Connection is the Judge assigned to help bring down Trump. Same old, same old… No doubt, she should have recused due to her connections but, c’est la vie. Amazing how the Clintons friends keep trying, and failing; to drag dead Hillary into the White House.
Gorsuch just ruled against the man who appointed him. Judges are known to rule without regard to political connections or relationships.
What do you want, judges recusing themselves on every situation that stretches the definition of “conflict”? to an absurd degree?
But wait! She was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan! That means she had to recuse herself from all cases involving Democrats or Republicans!
I think that means she can only sit on cases involving Greens suing Libertarians. 
Moderator Note
Tempe Jeff, political jabs are against the rules in General Questions. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Because
I understand the idea that the team examining the evidence should know who Cohen’s clients are, so they know what is relevant to their examination and what is not.
Why does this need to be revealed to the public? I don’t see how the public need to have public trials is furthered by revealing the names of people who are not charged, not involved, and who have nothing to do with the case.
Regards,
Shodan
But what about people who are not charged, are involved, and have something to do with the case?
Yes, but it’s up to Cohen to make that argument and he failed to do so. Furthermore, if you look at the cases, a client’s name has generally found to be privileged information when it is in the public’s interest to know the information that the client wanted to convey confidentially, for instance, to encourage reporting of public corruption. Another element of those cases is that all of the relevant confidential communication between the attorney and the client had already been disclosed and the client’s name was the only thing left preserving the client’s privilege. Neither of these things are true of Hannity. We still don’t know what he discussed with Cohen. Hannity wasn’t trying to confidentially report information of public interest through his Cohen. The policy reasons supporting his wish for anonymity are absent.
As best as I can discern from the news accounts, Cohen waived any argument that the name was privileged by stating the name on the record when he had the option to keep it private. Again, the default is that the evidence should be public. Cohen failed to argue why it shouldn’t be public and so it is public. You need to defend why the court should not make evidence public when Cohen presented no argument that it should remain confidential. It turns out the fact that Hannity is Cohen’s client is a matter of public interest.
I’d be a lot more concerned if the courts, in secret, learned that Hannity was the client and decided that shouldn’t be disclosed because of who he is. He isn’t entitled to special protection.
I think you’re forgetting that Sean Hannity is a journalist (in the loosest sense of the term), who extensively covers the goings-on of the political realm and of the POTUS in particular on his political talk show on a news network claiming to be fair and balanced. He is now discovered to have ties to the criminal investigation that the POTUS and his lawyer are currently subject to by utilizing the services of said lawyer. He has never publicly disclosed this link. Instead he feigns impartiality by hiding this important piece of information because he knows viewers may perceive him to have a conflict of interest when he covers anything related to the POTUS and his lawyer in light of this knowledge.
So yes, it is crucial that the public knows this crucial piece of information because journalistic integrity is very much a matter of public interest. And like others have said, Cohen has not given an adequate reason for why his client’s identity should remain private.
The SDNY is asserting that Cohen is nothing but a bag man, that’s he’s nobody’s “personal attorney.”
Knowing the names of his “clients” and that they are real people is germane to that, among other things.
Hannity came right out and cut the “client” list down to two. What a botch.
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge “bag man” is not a term of law. Cohen has all the required qualifications and permissions to act as a lawyer in New York and is purporting to do so, so regardless of whether he’s giving legal advice, defending his clients in court or picking up their drycleaning, an attorney-client relationship exists with all the protections (and limits on those protections) that apply to attorneys who aren’t low-life scum (yes, they exist). And of course one of the limits on those protections is that the lawyer can’t be engaged in criminal activity himself, which is the point at issue here.
As noted above, Cohen and his representation had ample opportunity to put forward reasons to keep Hannity’s name private. They didn’t. If they had and the court had still released it I might be more inclined to attempt some sympathy about it but that’s not what happened.
One of these things isn’t like the other. Lawyer-client privilege isn’t created just because you hire a lawyer; it only applies to the practice of law, such as providing legal advice or representing the person in court. If you hire a lawyer to act as a business agent for you, that doesn’t trigger privilege, unless the retainer includes the giving of legal advice. Picking up dry-cleaning, or other business agencies, doesn’t do it.
This is absolutely correct. It’s interesting to me that the president may have exactly Gyrate’s misapprehension. That could put him in for a world of hurt.
That’s my speculation as well. Remember, Trump’s model lawyer was Ray Cohn …
She sent Michael Milken to jail, aided and abetted by Rudy Guiliani, in his first newsworthy (as in “national”) conviction. She also hired a nanny.
This is surely evidence of… something!
Huh?
Worse yet, it was actually ROY Cohn!
<shiver>