President Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, revealed in court Monday that his secret third client is Sean Hannity, inadvertently giving Jimmy Kimmel all the material he needed for his monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live! later that night. A week earlier, Hannity and Kimmel engaged in a nasty back and forth on Twitter, which Kimmel tried to end Apr. 8 when he said he'd realized "the level of vitriol" coming from both sides is ultimately "harmful to our country."
Previously, on his FOX News program, Hannity had called Kimmel a "despicable disgrace" for joking about First Lady Melania Trump's accent. Airing his grievances on social media, he created the #PervertKimmel hashtag and shared old clips of Kimmel on Comedy Central's The Man Show, dubbing him "Harvey Weinstein Jr." for making sexually suggestive jokes in his bits.
In the end, Hannity accepted his apology Apr. 9. "I believe everyone should apologize. That's what my religion teaches me. I assume he is sincere. From my perspective, I really do enjoy a good fight," he said on his show, "and I do agree with Jimmy in the sense it's time to move on."
But Cohen's revelation was too juicy for Kimmel to ignore.
"Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, was in court today desperately trying to keep his very small client list private. Michael Cohen has three known clients: One of them is Donald Trump, for whom he paid Stormy Daniels. Client No. 2 is Elliott Broidy; this guy is the former Deputy Finance Chair for the RNC. Michael negotiated a $1.6 million payment to a Playboy model he had an affair with...and impregnated, by the way," Kimmel said Monday. "And she had an abortion, so he's a good dude. And this morning, Michael Cohen was forced to reveal the name of a mystery third client. He tried everything to keep it secret, but the judge ordered him to reveal the name of Client No. 3. And shockingly, that client turned out to be my pal Sean Hannity of Fox News. Isn't that interesting that he would need advice from Michael Cohen?"
Hannity tried to distance himself from Cohen, via Twitter, earlier in the day, and Kimmel read his tweet aloud for the audience: "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective," he read, quoting Hannity. Making fun of his response, he joked, "That sounds normal: He has a lawyer he doesn't pay! By the way, I'm thinking of hiring Michael Cohen as my lawyer, because he only has three clients—apparently he works for free! He doesn't take money from anyone!"
"Hannity was tweeting furiously this afternoon to distance himself, as you might imagine, from a lawyer whose only job seems to be paying women out," Kimmel said. "He wrote, 'I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third party.' I don't know what kind of legal advice doesn't involve a third party, unless maybe Sean Hannity was thinking about suing himself? But besides the implications that are raised, it's a big deal because Sean Hannity's been the chief propaganda guy for Trump's legal team. He never disclosed that he's also represented by a member of that legal team. If this is the biggest witch-hunt in history, as they say it is, we're running out of spots on the broomstick. It's getting very full. We may have to add an extension to this thing."
Hannity has yet to respond to Kimmel's monologue.