AT&T Negotiating to Pay Chris Cuomo $9 Million to Shut Up About Jeff Zucker

AT&T, the parent company of CNN, is willing to pay former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo around $9 million to prevent him from revealing what he knows about now-former CNN president Jeff Zucker.

This week, Zucker told staffers that he resigned because he did not disclose a romantic relationship with Allison Gollust, the chief marketing officer for CNN.

But according to the New York Post, Zucker agreed to resign at the request of AT&T chief John Stankey. The agreement said that if Zucker resigned without a fight, then Stankey would settle with Cuomo over a pending lawsuit that threatens to bring Zucker's graver actions to light.

"While Zucker paid the price stepping down as top dog of a global television network, he did so with the agreement that he would keep a piece of his privacy for leaving quickly and without a fight," sources told the Post.

"If Cuomo filed his lawsuit and AT&T fought it, then potentially damaging information about Zucker could come out, too, the sources said."

While Chris Cuomo has not filed the lawsuit, CNN is aware that a draft of the lawsuit mentions Zucker's name multiple times. The draft presumably includes information that uncovers Zucker's role in aiding Cuomo's brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

"Zucker and Allison Gollust had an ethically dubious relationship with former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo," the Post reports.

"The pair would coach the governor on his now-infamous Covid briefings — telling him what to say and how to respond to criticisms from President Donald Trump to make more compelling television."

Keep in mind, Zucker lifted the ban that prevented Chris Cuomo from covering or interviewing his brother in the spring of 2020, around the time of Andrew's COVID briefings.

So Zucker did not merely resign for not disclosing a consensual relationship with a colleague, as he cites in his resignation letter. That was a cover. Whatever he's hiding, AT&T believes it's damning.

So much so that AT&T is negotiating with Chris Cuomo to reach a deal that'd pay him half of the $18 million remaining on his contract "in an effort to shut him up."

All of this drama leads back to Andrew Cuomo. The governor once admired by Democrats everywhere has brought down himself, his younger brother and the head of CNN in less than a year. And AT&T/CNN fears it could be next.