Bob Quinn, a former Mayer Brown trial attorney who has led AT&T Inc.'s lobbying team since 2016, has retired amid growing scrutiny over the $600,000 the telecom giant paid to Michael Cohen last year.

Quinn, executive vice president for external affairs and legislative affairs, ran the regulatory shop for state and federal operations and oversaw legislative efforts across the country. Previously, he led AT&T's work before the Federal Communications Commission as the company's senior vice president for regulatory affairs. In his first role at AT&T, as a vice president in the federal regulatory affairs group, he represented AT&T before not only the FCC but the U.S. Justice Department.

Quinn's retirement was announced in an internal memo AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson sent Friday, in which he described Cohen's hiring as a “big mistake.”

“In this instance, our Washington D.C. team's vetting process clearly failed, and I take responsibility for that,” Stephenson said in the memo. For the “foreseeable future,” he added, Quinn's external and legislative affairs team will report to AT&T general counsel David McAtee.

Quinn, according to a Reuters report Friday, was responsible for hiring Cohen, a Trump Organization lawyer and self-described “fixer” for Donald Trump.

AT&T said this week it paid Cohen $600,000 for “insights and understanding the new administration.” It specifically hired Cohen to “focus on specific long-term planning initiatives as well as the immediate issue of corporate tax reform and the acquisition of Time Warner,” according to an internal document reported by the Washington Post.

Cohen was not a registered lobbyist for AT&T, and neither was Quinn. “I don't qualify under the standards that are in place in Congress,” Quinn said last year in a C-SPAN segment about telecom regulations.

In the internal memo Friday morning, Stephenson said “everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate.” He added: “But the fact is our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment.”

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson testifies in 2016. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / NLJ

Quinn had written extensively on regulatory issues on AT&T's public policy website. In March 2017, Quinn wrote a post titled “delivering on the Trump regulatory reform agenda.” He touted the efforts by the FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, to reform “outdated” regulations.

“Over the past several years, United States telecom policy has been marked by the FCC placing its thumb on the public policy scales in order to pick winners and losers in the marketplace,” Quinn wrote.

Quinn was just one of AT&T's many ties to Mayer Brown. The firm has lobbied for AT&T since 2001, with its recent work focusing on broadband policy, along with privacy and arbitration legislation.

In the first three months of this year, Mayer Brown was the highest-paid firm in AT&T's lobbying stable, pulling in $110,000. Last year, Mayer Brown received $420,000 from AT&T, according to lobbying disclosures. Among AT&T's other lobbying firms are Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Wiley Rein and Arnold & Porter.

Mayer Brown has also done battle for AT&T in court. Two Washington-based partners, Andy Pincus and Archer Parasharami, advocated for the company in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that class action waivers in arbitration agreements are enforceable. The firm successfully represented AT&T in 2013 in class action litigation in Illinois state court. In 2015, AT&T's legal department named Mayer Brown the inaugural winner of the “pro bono partner law firm of the year.”

In Washington federal trial court, O'Melveny & Myers partner Daniel Petrocelli has led the defense of AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner against a Justice Department challenge. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon is weighing whether to block the deal. Leon is expected to announce his ruling in the coming weeks.

 

Stephenson's memo is posted in full below: