NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th July, 2020) Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney of Donald Trump who was jailed for crimes that included payment of hush money to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump, has been sent back to prison for violating his conditional detention at home, his lawyer told Sputnik on Thursday.
"He was remanded back," Cohen's attorney Jeffrey Levine said over the telephone, confirming that his client was under Federal custody again, after being released from prison to home confinement due to his fears that he might contract the novel coronavirus.
Earlier on Thursday, media reported that Cohen was returned to prison because he was photographed by The New York Post last week having a meal with his wife and another couple on the sidewalk of a Manhattan restaurant near his apartment.
The Bureau of Prisons said in a May 21 statement that Cohen had been placed on furlough pending placement on home confinement.
In another statement run by US media on Thursday, the Bureau of Prisons said Cohen had refused the conditions of his home confinement and as a result, has been returned to a federal prison facility.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to multiple financial crimes, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. He entered prison in May 2019 on a three-year sentence and has since become a fierce critic of the US president after years of defending him.
