NEW YORK — A federal judge on Thursday ordered that President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, be released from prison, saying that the government retaliated against him for writing a book about the president.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered Cohen's release two weeks after he was apprehended to serve out his sentence for campaign finance violations and other crimes. His 3-year sentence had been furloughed in May due to the threat posed by the novel coronavirus in prisons.
Update 1:25 p.m. EDT July 24: Cohen’s attorney, Danya Perry, told The Associated Press that he was released from a federal prison in New York on Friday afternoon.
Original report: Hellerstein ordered Cohen released from prison by 2 p.m. on Friday.
“How can I take any other inference than that (the decision to remand Cohen was) retaliatory?” Hellerstein asked prosecutors, who insisted in court papers and again Thursday that Probation Department officers did not know about the book when they wrote a provision of home confinement that severely restricted Cohen’s public communications.
“I’ve never seen such a clause in 21 years of being a judge and sentencing people and looking at terms of supervised release,” the judge said. “Why would the Bureau of Prisons ask for something like this ... unless there was a retaliatory purpose?”
The 53-year-old lawyer filed suit against the government Monday seeking his release back to home confinement.
"He is being held in retaliation for his protected speech, including drafting a book manuscript that is critical of the President -- and recently making public his intention to publish that book soon, shortly before the upcoming election," Cohen's attorney wrote in a court petition.
In a response filed in court, government officials argued that Cohen was remanded back into custody not because he was writing a book but "because he was antagonistic during a meeting with probation officers at which he was supposed to sign the agreement that would have allowed him to complete the remaining portion of his criminal sentence in home confinement."
In 2018, Cohen admitted to lying to Congress during an investigation into Russian election meddling headed by then-special counsel Robert Mueller. He later also pleaded guilty to eight other charges, including multiple counts of tax evasion and arranging illicit payments to silence women who posed a threat to Trump’s presidential campaign.
He began serving his sentence in May 2019 at the Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville, in New York.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.