In the high-stakes battle between President Donald Trump and Michael Cohen, some of the people in their immediate orbit are ending up as collateral hits.

Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer dropped several names of people in Trump’s inner circle Wednesday during the nationally-televised testimony before the House Oversight Committee, including the president’s adult children and top executives at his namesake company, the Trump Organization. Cohen also fingered Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager and the legal team surrounding the president.

Story Continued Below

It’s unclear whether any of the people Cohen referenced will face any kind of criminal charges or other legal consequences, though during his testimony he declined to answer several lawmakers’ questions about them because they’re part of ongoing federal investigations.

Any conflict between Cohen’s account and what those he mentioned have told investigators could also be fodder for future legal tangles. Many of the individuals the former Trump lawyer cited have now given their own statements to federal prosecutors and in some cases Congressional committees, creating possible legal exposure over any differences.

But prosecutors are unlikely to bring any case based on Cohen’s word alone since he admitted to repeatedly lying for Trump, and previously pleaded guilty to lying to Congress.

At the very least, Cohen’s comments about the people in Trump’s circle are likely to draw further scrutiny from lawmakers as they continue their investigations into everything from Russian interference in the 2016 election to the president’s business dealings.

Here’s a closer look at who’s name came up Wednesday and why:

Donald Trump Jr.:

Trump Jr. was the focus of numerous responses from Cohen, including a direct accusation that Trump’s oldest son had a role in a criminal conspiracy by helping facilitate the payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

“I believe that the top signature is his signature,” Cohen said, fingering Trump Jr. as signing a $35,000 check sent in March 2017 as a partial reimbursement of the $130,000 Cohen arranged to transfer to Daniels just before the election.

The scheme is one of the campaign-finance crimes Cohen admitted to last year, but prosecutors have not charged Trump Jr. with any offense.

Cohen’s testimony was also at odds with statements Donald Trump Jr. has made to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project. Trump Jr. told the Senate Intelligence Committee in September 2017 that he was only “peripherally aware” of the effort, but Cohen said Wednesday that Trump Jr. got numerous updates on the effort to build a Trump-branded building in the Russian capital.

Cohen said Wednesday he gave “approximately 10” such briefings to Trump Jr. or Ivanka Trump or both, although it wasn’t entirely clear over what time frame.

Cohen also said he believes Trump Jr. is the Trump Organization official identified by prosecutors in court documents only as “Executive-2.” That person allegedly approved at least one of the reimbursement payments.

However, the identity of that executive remained in some doubt Wednesday, as the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump Organization staffer in question is actually the real estate group’s controller, Jeffrey McConney.

An attorney for Trump Jr. and the Trump Organization, which Trump Jr. currently co-leads with his brother Eric while his father is president, didn’t respond to a request for comment. However, Trump Jr. took a series of shots at Cohen on Twitter as his testimony unfolded.

“Cohen also lied under oath about 3 times saying he wasn’t interested in a role in the administration. In truth he actively lobbied anyone that would listen for the Chief of Staff role or anything else. Plenty of reporters know it. He can’t help but perjure himself,” Trump Jr. wrote.

Ivanka Trump:

Cohen testified that, like Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump was on the receiving end of numerous briefings about the Trump Tower Moscow project. It’s unclear what lines of inquiry the president’s oldest daughter has answered from investigators, but her public responses raise questions of whether she, too, stuck to what Cohen claims was a false “party line” that the project was left for dead early in the 2016 presidential campaign.

In an interview earlier this month, Ivanka Trump downplayed the effort expended on the Moscow project, saying she knew “literally almost nothing” about it.

“This was not exactly an advanced project,” the Trump daughter told ABC News. “It was really just a non-factor in our minds.”

An attorney for Ivanka Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

Eric Trump:

Cohen said some checks he received in connection with the Daniels payoff may have been signed by Eric Trump, but the former Trump lawyer didn’t provide any copies of those as he testified Wednesday.

While Cohen at one point agreed that there had been a criminal conspiracy, at another juncture, the Trump attorney said he couldn’t say for sure that Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. or Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg knew the payments were “false and illegal.”

“I can’t make that conclusion,” said Cohen.

What those men knew or were told about the law may be as important as what they did, because under the federal campaign finance statute, violations are only a crime if the person involved knows they’re breaking the law.

Eric Trump and an attorney for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.

Allen Weisselberg:

Cohen mentioned the longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer more than two dozen times during the hearing, including in conversations about the plan to pay off Daniels. Cohen also said he and Weisselberg spoke further about the strategy in Weisselberg’s office at Trump Tower. Cohen also said Weisselberg and Donald Trump Jr. signed a 2017 check reimbursing him for the hush money payments.

“Mr. Weisselberg for sure (knew) about the entire discussions and negotiations prior to the election,” Cohen told lawmakers. In August,news broke that federal prosecutors in New York granted immunity from prosecution to Weisselberg, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Rhona Graff:

Graff, Trump’s long standing executive assistant who worked at Trump Tower for three decades, could be contacted to corroborate Cohen’s testimony if she hasn’t already. Specifically, Cohen said she may know if Trump knew that hacked Democratic emails were going to be released during the 2016 campaign. “Her office was directly next to his and she’s involved in a lot that went on,” Cohen told members of Congress. Graff, who has been described as Trump’s gatekeeper, has continued to work for Trump since he was elected president. Her attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Roger Stone:

Cohen’s testimony may have added to the troubles for Stone, the longtime Trump associate who has already been indicted for lying to Congress and obstructing lawmakers’ Russia probe. In his opening statement, Cohen described a conversation he overheard in Trump’s office in Trump Tower in July 2016, when Stone was put on speakerphone to report back what he’d just discussed with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an incoming “massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Stone has long denied having direct communications with Assange, and on Wednesday he even risked violating a federal judge’s gag order that was placed on him restricting his commentary about the Russia probe to say in an email to POLITICO that Cohen’s testimony was “not true.”

Corey Lewandowski:

Cohen said he spoke to Lewandowski, who served as Trump’s first campaign manager for more than a year, early in the campaign about what dates Trump could possibly travel to Russia to push for the construction of a Trump Tower in that country. The trip never happened because Cohen could not acquire the property in Russia. Lewandowski was fired but remains an outside adviser to Trump and has co-written two books on Trump.

He and his attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment but Lewandowski has previously called Cohen a “rat.”

Jay Sekulow:

Cohen dragged his replacement as Trump’s personal attorney into the mix in an attempt to explain how he came to be charged for giving false statements to the House Intelligence Committee about an aborted Trump Tower project in Moscow. Cohen specifically mentioned that Sekulow was one of the lawyers who in 2017 reviewed his prepared testimony and made changes to it.

But when asked again about the process by a different member of Congress, Cohen responded that he didn’t know which lawyers at the White House reviewed his statement. Cohen added that he and his first attorney, Stephen Ryan, originally wrote the testimony and then it had circulated among several attorneys, including with Abbe Lowell, the lawyer to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner who was involved in a joint defense agreement.

In a statement to POLITICO, Sekulow rejected Cohen’s assertion that he or any other lawyers for Trump altered the at-issue statement. “Today’s testimony by Michael Cohen that attorneys for the president edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false,” Sekulow said.

Rudy Giuliani:

Cohen made repeated claims about the former New York mayor, who joined the president’s personal legal team last May. The former Trump lawyer accused Giuliani of leveling attacks on him that he thought were threats to his safety and possible witness intimidation. Cohen also took issue with Giuliani for drawing attention to potential ties between the business dealings of Cohen’s father-in-law and the Russian mafia.

Pushing back on his GOP critics who questioned why he was violating attorney-client privilege by releasing audio tapes of his conversations with Trump, Cohen also insisted that Giuliani was first to waive the confidentiality agreement by discussing the tapes. And he noted that Giuliani’s appearance on Fox News last spring included an inaccurate description of how Trump reimbursed Cohen for the hush money payments.

In a text message, Giuliani disputed several of Cohen’s claims. He said he didn’t waive the privilege and only commented about the tape after it was leaked “by him or special counsel” Mueller’s office. He also pushed back on Cohen’s complaint that Giuliani’s remarks about his father-in-law were intended to be a threat.

“All I did is repeat the 30 or so media reports that he and some members of his family were involved with organized crime. The threat, if any, comes from them if true,” Giuliani wrote.

Jeffrey Getzel:

Jeffrey Getzel, a Long Island, New York accountant, was one of several figures who are far from household names but suddenly found themselves under fire at Wednesday’s hearing. When Cohen came under attack from Republicans over the five counts of tax fraud he’s admitted to, the former Trump lawyer at one point took a shot at his former accountant.

“He’s almost directing me in an earlier memo to commit fraud, but putting all of that aside with Jeff Getzel, I pled guilty and I made my mistake,” Cohen declared. “I’ve said 100 times now — I’m not so sure why this singular attack on my taxes, if you want to look at them, I’m more than happy to show them to you.”

Press accounts last summer said Getzel was subpoenaed before a grand jury in Manhattan to testify about Cohen’s finances. GOP lawmakers repeatedly accused Cohen Wednesday of trying to blame others for his crimes, including by pointing the finger at Getzel.

A woman who answered the phone at Getzel’s office Wednesday interrupted before a reporter could get out a question about the accountant’s mention at the hearing. “No comment,” the woman said, before hanging up.

It was Michael Cohen’s day on Capitol Hill, but Democrats are still waiting for Robert Mueller.

Donald Trump’s former lawyer leveled a raft of explosive allegations against the president Wednesday, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team are in no hurry to launch impeachment proceedings.

Story Continued Below

Instead, they’re still waiting to see what the special counsel turns up.

Pelosi largely sidestepped questions about Cohen’s testimony on Wednesday, declaring that she had been too busy to watch the hours-long grilling he received from her members on the House Oversight Committee.

“I haven’t seen one word of it. If I have a statement, you’ll be the first to know,” the California Democrat told reporters as she walked into the House chamber for floor votes. “Let me say this. I care a lot more about the bad policies of Donald Trump than his bad personality.”

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) offered similar sentiments: “Let me repeat: We need to wait for the Muller report and see what it says,” he told a throng of reporters. Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the No. 3 Democrat, declined to weigh in, saying he had yet to watch Cohen’s testimony.

The question of whether to impeach Trump is perhaps the most sensitive one facing Democratic leaders, who are eager to keep a caucus with vastly competing interests — from moderates in GOP districts to outspoken progressives calling to “impeach the motherf—er” — united.

So far, Pelosi has largely been able to keep the caucus from erupting into a public brawl over impeachment, despite a multi-million-dollar pressure campaign from liberal megadonor Tom Steyer and increasing demands on the left to take action. But it’s unclear how long that can last.

“Isn’t it interesting that not one person on our side even mentioned the word impeachment? Not one,” Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) told reporters after a nine-hour hearing, adding that he wants to “proceed very cautiously.”

Pressure to remove Trump from office is sure to grow within the liberal base after Cohen presented what he claimed was physical evidence that Trump had committed a felony while in office — a check signed by the president that Cohen claims was repayment for efforts to silence adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the election.

But even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who said in an interview published Wednesday that there’s “no question” that she would vote to impeach Trump — was restrained when pressed by reporters on the issue of impeachment.

Ocasio-Cortez said the hearing had turned up some “gravely concerning evidence,” but cautioned that Democrats need to process the details before they move forward.

“The documents were just provided this morning,” she said. “So we need to really go through that.”

And while Cohen’s testimony — including claims the president knew about the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians — may meet the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard for impeachment, several Democrats said it isn’t enough on its own to outweigh the political risk of going forward.

“Any discussions about impeachment proceedings remains premature,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the No. 5 Democrat, noting news stories that the Mueller report could be finished any day. “The heart of the investigation… is whether Donald Trump or close associates of the Trump campaign were involved in working with Russian spies to sell out our democracy.”

A half-dozen other senior Democrats largely ducked the questions or became defensive when asked about the impact Cohen could have on demands for impeachment proceedings.

When asked whether Cohen’s testimony changed Democrats’ calculations on impeachment, House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern turned the matter to Republicans.

“I think a better question is, what are Republicans going to do?” McGovern (D-Mass.) responded, noting that the GOP-controlled Senate would have to vote to remove Trump from office if the House impeached him.

Since taking back the House in January, Democratic leaders have tried to stifle impeachment calls from rank-and-file lawmakers by reassuring them that any action before Mueller finishes his probe could backfire badly in the next election.

This restrained approach comes even as the Democratic majority has launched several wide-ranging probes into Trump’s administration, businesses and finances, all of which could help make the case for ousting the president down the road.

And while the move has largely contained an antsy left flank, some Democrats signaled Wednesday that they were increasingly ready to take on their own leadership.

“They don’t feel that way yet, but we’ll work on them,” said Rep. John Yarmuth, who leads the House Budget Committee.

The Kentucky Democrat — who has inched closer to supporting formal impeachment hearings all year — said he was convinced by Cohen’s testimony on Wednesday.

“The evidence is pretty unambiguous,” Yarmuth said. “The president of the United States committed a crime while in office, he needs to be brought up for impeachment. I think we’re at that part.”

But several other Democrats said while Cohen’s testimony was damning to the president, they didn’t think it was enough to sway two constituencies key to launching impeachment proceedings: the American public and GOP lawmakers.

Republicans, meanwhile, are salivating at the prospect of impeachment proceedings, which many privately believe could be key to their campaign to take back the House after last fall’s blue wave.

Republicans led by Oversight ranking member Jim Jordan of Ohio have been sharply critical of Cohen’s appearance this week, calling it a “coordinated campaign” with Democrats to impeach Trump. Jordan and other Republicans on the committee ripped Cohen Wednesday, repeatedly questioning his credibility and describing him as the Democrats’ “patsy.”

Wednesday’s hearing marked the highest-profile witness to testify against a sitting president since the Watergate investigation into Richard Nixon. But it’s clear Democrats are still trying to sort out the gravity of Cohen’s testimony and how it might shape the majority’s future decisions on impeachment.

Some Democrats were explicit that this was the “first step” in a lengthy probe into the president.

“This was meant to be the opening hearing, to give context, to let the American people start to hear things out in the open,” said Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.), a freshman who is in leadership. “I don’t think we’re there yet. I think we’re going to have to see all of the evidence and certainly there’s a lot more that we need to look into.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who was one of lawmakers grilling Cohen in the committee, stressed that there would be “a lot more hearings.”

“There are entire categories of crimes that haven’t been mentioned today,” Raskin said, citing claims that Trump businesses have profited from foreign companies. “This is a good beginning in terms of pulling the curtain back about what’s taking place.”

But other senior Democrats grew defensive when pressed on whether Cohen’s testimony and his evidence against Trump had given the party enough to begin impeachment proceedings.

“[Impeachment] was not the purpose of our hearing,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a member on the Oversight Committee, told reporters. “Y’all throw out questions and then don’t ever want to take responsibility for the implications behind them.”

Andrew Desiderio and John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

It can be a bit complicated, but please follow these steps: Profile > Privacy and Settings > Report a Problem > Add a contact email

— TikTok (@tiktok_us) February 27, 2019

Julian Castro made Puerto Rico his first stop after announcing his presidential bid. Elizabeth Warren showed up days later. And Bernie Sanders just named San Juan’s lightning-rod mayor as his campaign co-chair.

Puerto Rico has vaulted into the presidential primary limelight like never before, both as a campaign stop and a campaign issue.

Story Continued Below

Between the well-publicized ravages of Hurricane Maria, loud criticisms of President Trump’s disaster response and the delegate yield from the commonwealth’s primary, Puerto Rico is now something close to a must-stop for Democratic White House hopefuls.

Adding to Puerto Rico’s political value, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is backing a plan to move the 2020 primary from early June to one of the final two weekends in March. Just as candidates wax on about corn in Iowa, Rosselló hopes they pay attention to what’s important in Puerto Rico: federal recovery efforts and the governor’s push for statehood for the island, although he’s expressed frustration with candidates who won’t weigh in clearly on the issue.

“We’re working hard to make statehood a top-tier issue,” said Manny Ortiz, an advisor to Rosselló who’s also a Democratic National Committee member. “Puerto Rico moving up the primary can only help highlight the issues that are important: the unequal treatment of citizens and the statehood issue.”

The commonwealth is also chafing under what’s called the Fiscal Control Board, which Congress and former President Obama approved to manage the island’s finances under a law that has given Puerto Rico less control of its destiny. And President Trump’s handling of disaster response has made him deeply unpopular with Puerto Rican voters on and off the island, making it fertile ground to campaign against him.

With 64 delegates at stake and a population of about 3.2 million, Puerto Rico is larger than 21 other states — and it’s also a springboard to reach the growing Boricua diaspora in Florida and New York, as well as the smaller communities in California, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

The governor’s political team and advocacy groups like the Latino Victory Fund and others have been speaking with emissaries for candidates Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg as well as possible candidate Joe Biden for a visit.

Latino Victory last month called on all the candidates to campaign on the island, which is home to the nation’s second-largest population of Latinos. It’s not a hard sell to make: for Democrats, the island stands as a mammoth and tangible reminder of the incompetence of the Trump administration’s hurricane response and his overall poor relations with Hispanic voters.

“The symbolic value is at play and it’s definitely very powerful,” said Latino Victory’s Mayra Macias. “The visual Trump created by throwing paper towels at people who needed relief is easy to point to as an example of the failures of the administration.”

Puerto Rico’s emergence as a campaign trail hotspot follows a midterm election where it played an oversized role in Senate and gubernatorial races in Florida, home to the largest mainland Boricua population. Candidates from both parties traveled to the island and even advertised on San Juan’s WAPA-TV, which is still popular with stateside residents.

Campaigning in Puerto Rico is fraught with unique political complications. The major political parties there revolve around the question of the island’s status as a commonwealth. The mainland political parties of the United States are of secondary concern on the island.

And then there are the rivalries.

Rosselló and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz – whom Sanders named as his campaign co-chair — have had a frosty relationship and this week traded barbs in the press over the governor’s involvement in U.S. intervention in nearby Venezuela. Cruz has been rumored to be eying a race against Rosselló or against the island’s resident commissioner in Congress next year. Rosselló is also a Democrat; Cruz hasn’t been a regular member of the party.

Underlying the tensions between the two: Cruz has advocated for Puerto Rican sovereignty, Rosselló for statehood.

So far, the announced Democratic presidential candidates who have weighed in on Puerto Rico have refused to say clearly where they stand on statehood. Instead, they say, the people’s will in Puerto Rico should guide Congress on whether to admit Puerto Rico as a state, a position that essentially ignores the fact that Puerto Rico has voted twice, in 2012 and in 2017, for statehood by wide margins.

Rosselló and others want to know if candidates favor statehood, independence or commonwealth status. Rosselló wants voters to be able to cast ballots in the general election for president (they’re currently limited to primaries) and for members of Congress who have a binding vote.

“What I want to hear everybody talk about, is their stance on the equality of U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico. It should be a yes or no answer,” Rosselló told reporters last week, according to Reuters. “There should be no room for wiggle.”

But some are wiggling.

Castro, the only Latino candidate in the field, made his first official campaign visit not to Iowa last month, but to Puerto Rico to highlight the plight and importance of the island. When asked by reporters about what status he favors, Castro praised Puerto Ricans “self-determination” and insisted it was their decision to make.

Then came Warren. She had essentially the same response as Castro, saying that, “For years, too many leaders have imposed too many decisions on you against your will. Respect for Puerto Rico means you have the right to determine your association with the United States, period,” Warren said in her prepared remarks. “Puerto Rico deserves self-determination. And on this question I will support the decision of the people of Puerto Rico.”

The Castro and Warren campaigns couldn’t be reached to clarify their positions on the island’s status.

Though some supporters of Sanders’ criticized Warren for taking no position last month, his campaign did the same thing, telling POLITICO this week that the Vermont senator has “introduced a bill that had a provision for the federal government to respect a binding resolution on statehood or independence.”

Asked which status option Sanders preferred, the campaign said that “he favors what the people of Puerto Rico choose.” Yet Sanders left no doubt on the question of statehood for Washington, D.C. tweeting this week that he “strongly” supports it and subsequently ignored those who asked about Puerto Rico’s status.

By picking Cruz as a co-chair of his campaign, Sanders highlighted his interest in Puerto Rico and found an ally who angers the president. Trump complained in 2017 that the San Juan mayor was “nasty” to him for her criticisms of his administration’s disaster response after Hurricane Maria. Cruz, at one point, proudly wore Trump’s insult when she gave TV interviews dressed in a black T-shirt with the word “NASTY” printed in large white letters — a move that made her a face of the anti-Trump progressive movement and a sought-after political speaker on the mainland.

More than a year later, Trump was still miffed and cited Cruz in saying he was “an absolute no” on the issue of Puerto Rico statehood.

“With the mayor of San Juan as bad as she is … Puerto Rico shouldn’t be talking about statehood until they get some people that really know what they’re doing,” Trump said in comments that were widely panned by the Puerto Rican community.

Trump also became embittered with Rosselló, who stepped up his criticisms of Trump after the president in 2018 without evidence called Puerto Rico’s estimated death toll a conspiracy.

Afterward, Trump reportedly discussed ways of blocking disaster aid to the island, considered diverting the money to fund his stalled plan to build a border wall with Mexico and has refused to meet with Rosselló over recovery efforts, the governor told reporters last week.

The first Puerto Rican congressman from Florida, Democrat Darren Soto, said voters on and off the island have been paying attention to disaster recovery, which could haunt the president in 2020 in Florida.

“Trump’s recovery effort has been a monumental failure. And you don’t have to look far,” Soto said. “Whoever our nominee is will drive that point home.”

We want to clear something up regarding the Momo Challenge: We’ve seen no recent evidence of videos promoting the Momo Challenge on YouTube. Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges are against our policies.

— YouTube (@YouTube) February 27, 2019

HANOI — Stymied by the bumper-to-bumper traffic in Hanoi on Tuesday as the teeming Vietnamese capital absorbed the arrival of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Sean Hannity decided to get to the studio another way.

“After literally 40 minutes not moving, we’re getting nervous about getting on the air,” Hannity told his American audience, “I hopped on a scooter.” The Fox News host and close confidant of President Donald Trump broadcast images of himself, clad in the same navy blazer he was wearing on the air, zipping through Hanoi’s clogged streets on the back of a motorbike. “And by the way, we were riding on the sidewalk there, in case you were interested,” he added.

Story Continued Below

Hannity is here in Hanoi ahead of an exclusive interview with the president — the first sitdown with Trump at the conclusion of his second summit with Kim on Thursday.

It’s not the first time Fox News’ highest-rated primetime host has been granted this kind of special access. Hannity has chased Trump around the globe, from Singapore to Helsinki to Hanoi, for interviews with the president, offering up softball questions at pivotal moments of the Trump presidency. The result? The first snapshot of history gets filtered through a sympathetic lens.

While thousands of journalists traipse across the world to cover major presidential events, it is rare for opinion hosts to make such trips. But it’s become standard practice in the Trump era, as the president has personally invited friendly figures such as Hannity to accompany him on international forays or asked his press aides to schedule the interviews for him. The president has at times sat for simultaneous interviews with mainstream reporters — in Singapore, he talked with both Hannity and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos — but just as often limited his one-on-one conversations to a friendly interlocutor.

The White House declined to comment on the record.

The news division at Fox sent a full roster of journalists to Hanoi, including chief political anchor Bret Baier, chief national correspondent Ed Henry, anchor Bill Hemmer, chief White House correspondent John Roberts, senior foreign affairs correspondent Greg Palkot and D.C.-based correspondent Kristin Fisher. A network spokesperson confirmed that the news division reached out multiple times to the White House to request an interview in Hanoi with the president — but the White House chose Hannity.

Unlike Fox, other networks sent only their traditional teams. The three broadcast networks — NBC, CBS, and ABC — sent their broadcast anchors, though NBC included Hallie Jackson, Peter Alexander, Kelly O’Donnell and Bill Neely, who also pitch in with coverage on MSNBC. CNN’s big guns — Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper — stayed in the U.S., as did MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes.

But Fox News opinion personalities stand out for their boosterish approach to these foreign trips — and their glowing coverage has at times overshadowed the news division’s sober reporting. When senior administration officials visited Israel to preside over the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, for instance, Fox host Jeanine Pirro’s commentary attracted headlines of its own.

Trump’s affinity for Fox News, and its pro-Trump hosts in particular, extends to the interviews he grants stateside. According to CBS reporter Mark Knoller, as of February 21 Trump had done 45 interviews with Fox News since taking office. Seven of those went to Hannity, more than the number of sitdowns the president has done with every other network. Second to Fox, Trump has done five interviews each with NBC and CBS.

“It is not unprecedented for the president to have a special relationship with a particularly sympathetic journalist,” said Alex S. Jones, the former director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. “But Hannity is not a journalist. He is a propagandist.”

“I’m a talk show host and an outspoken conservative and honest about my opinions,” Hannity said through a spokesperson. “I have advocated for some of the same policies as the president for 30 years on radio and 23 years on Fox News.”

It’s a testament to the mutually beneficial relationship between the increasingly powerful opinion arm of the Fox News Channel and the White House itself. Since the outset of the administration, the two have operated as close allies, with network commentators trading access for glowing coverage that has reinforced the president’s favorite storylines and fought against or ignored criticism of his administration. Trump has even staffed his team with hires from Fox, creating a tight White House-Fox feedback loop with little precedent in American history.

Heading into Singapore last year, Trump faced widespread criticism for agreeing to meet with the North Korean leader without obtaining any real commitments from Kim. Critics charged the president was turning a pariah into an equal partner on the world stage, while naively allowing North Korea to establish itself as a de facto nuclear power.

Hannity brushed aside those concerns, comparing the summit with Kim to that between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, one that historians consider the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

“You know, in the lead up to this, and this was pretty amazing,” Hannity told Trump at the close of the Singapore summit. “[Kim] had dismantled a nuclear test site, he crossed over the DMZ, three hostages were released, the missiles stopped being fired. You wouldn’t have come here if he was not willing to talk about denuclearization…all of that happened before you walked in and I don’t remember that you said ‘cargo planes of cash’ or gave anything really before the lead up. Why do you think he’s interested in doing this after spending that time with him?”

Hannity was there, too, to provide a soft landing after the president’s press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki six weeks later, an event slammed by Republicans and Democrats alike after Trump, standing beside the Russian leader, said he didn’t see “any reason” why Moscow would have interfered in the 2016 election despite the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment to the contrary.

”You were very strong at the end of that press conference,” Hannity told Trump.

Many of his colleagues disagreed. “Disgusting,” said Fox host Neil Cavuto. “Almost surreal at points,” said news anchor Bret Baier. “Probably the low point of the presidency,” said Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.

Hannity expressed no such reservations about Trump’s performance — instead, he took issue with the “unhinged” media voicing displeasure.

Among the narratives Hannity and Trump have advanced in their globetrotting interviews is that of a dishonest media out to get the president.

“Obviously I’m a pretty strong critic of our news media in this country,” Hannity told Trump after the Singapore summit.

“The media is upset you say ‘enemy of the people.’ Aren’t you saying they’re not doing their job?” Hannity asked him in Helsinki.

Various Fox hosts have been critical of the president at times, be it Tucker Carlson blasting him for moving toward Democrats on gun control or Laura Ingraham ripping his handling of immigration. As for Hannity, he has allowed that Trump is “not a perfect person” and gently suggested “maybe he shouldn’t tweet out every thought he has.”

But these critiques have generally come from the president’s right — and more broadly, the line between the White House and the opinion arm of the Fox News Channel became increasingly blurry when longtime Hannity pal Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive and onetime Hannity producer, joined the White House as communications director last July. Shine remains in regular contact with his former colleagues, including Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and the cast of Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox and Friends.

Shine is among several former Fox News executives and personalities who either joined the administration or were considered for jobs. Heather Nauert, a former Fox News correspondent, became the State Department spokeswoman and recently withdrew from consideration to be ambassador to the United Nations. Pirro, a former judge in Westchester, New York, spoke with transition aides in late 2016 about joining the Department of Justice, and the president has raised the prospect of nominating her to the federal bench. Sebastian Gorka, a longtime commentator on various Fox News programs, briefly joined the White House but left the administration in August 2017 amid disputed circumstances.

“We certainly haven’t had a television network with this kind of close relationship, but if you think about 19th-century newspapers, there were lots of newspapers that took it proudly as their mission,” said David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism and contributor to Politico Magazine, “to put out the message of their party’s president.”

At times, it has been unclear whether Hannity is a part of the White House staff or a member of the press corps. When the president toured the Rio Grande Valley last month, the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker, the designated pool reporter, noted, “Sean Hannity has special access here. He huddled with Bill Shine and Secretary Nielsen and is following along on Trump’s tour, only standing with staff and federal officials as opposed to the press corps.”

The special access has been good business for Fox and its pro-Trump hosts. Hannity’s coverage from Singapore overshadowed the network’s news coverage, which was led by Baier and Chris Wallace. His broadcast on the eve of the summit was the highest-rated program on all of television, beating out “The Bachelorette” and prompting Forbes to write: “Who Won the Trump Kim Summit? Sean Hannity Did.” His exclusive interview after the Trump-Putin did almost as well, bringing in nearly 4 million viewers, a number that crushed the cable news competition.

Pirro, a New Yorker with a decades-long relationship with the president, built a website for her 10-day Israeli sojourn, selling packages complete with tours of “hotspots” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and various biblical sites. The cost for a “gold” package was $3,295; for platinum, the fee was $3,995. And for an extra $500, guests could “enjoy a private dinner with Judge Jeanine and invited guest Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

Her coverage was as gushing as Hannity’s. She broadcast “man-on-the-street” interviews from Jerusalem on her show, asking Israelis what they thought of the embassy move — all were in favor — and repeating, “so he’s a man of his word?” She also attended the invite-only opening ceremony of the embassy itself, along with Jewish-American luminaries including lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson. The evening beforehand, she lauded the move as “a truly historic moment in Israel’s history” and also hailed President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the nuclear deal with Iran.

“Trump has reassured the world that his world is worth more than any previous presidents,” she said. “His word is worth more than any treaty and stronger than any U.N. resolution.” The president, Pirro added, “like King Cyrus before him, fulfilled the biblical prophecy of the gods worshipped by Jews, Christians and, yes, Muslims, that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state and that the Jewish people finally deserve a righteous, free and sovereign Israel.”

Ruairi Arietta-Kenna and Michael Calderone contributed reporting.