NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd July, 2020) A US judge on Thursday ordered the release of President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen from prison by Friday after ruling that the government detained him in retaliation for his plans to publish a tell-all book , his lawyer told Sputnik on Thursday.
"My understanding is that he felt that the Bureau of Prisons' language in the federal location monitoring agreement was retaliatory," Cohen's lawyer Jeffrey Levine told Sputnik, referring to Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein's ruling that the bureau acted against Cohen because of a book Cohen planned to write about Trump.
Cohen's lawyers had argued that his client was the target of a retaliation by the Bureau of Prisons because he failed to agree on July 9 to one of the bureau's clauses that he should not publish a book about Trump if he wished to serve the remainder of his three-year prison term at home.
Cohen was furloughed from prison to home in late May due to his concerns that he might contract the coronavirus. Before being taken back into custody, he had been posting on social media about his upcoming book, which was going to be critical of Trump.
When Cohen was returned to prison on July 10, US media originally reported it because he was photographed having a meal with his wife and another couple outside a restaurant near his apartment, violating the terms of his home confinement. The Bureau of Prisons'�conditions for his continued home detention were not reported then.
Levine, one of Cohen's defense attorneys, said Hellerstein ordered Cohen released by Friday afternoon and did not immediately provide a judgment in writing after Thursday's hearing. He said the case was heard over the phone by the U.S. District Court of Manhattan because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But CNBC, which listened in on the arguments, quoted Hellerstein as saying that he could not take the Bureau of Prisons' action as anything other than retaliatory given that Cohen refused to agree to its clause on not publishing the book. "I've never seen such a clause, in 21 years in being a judge," CNBC quoted him as saying.
If Cohen does get a book out on Trump, he will be the third prominent person linked to the president who has either published or announced plans to publish by this year a book critical of either Trump or his administration. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton and Mary Trump, the president's niece, have recently published books critical of the White House and Trump, who stands for reelection in November.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to multiple financial crimes, lying to Congress, and to campaign finance violations related to hush money payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Trump. A former personal attorney of Trump, he�entered prison in May 2019 on a three-year sentence and has since become a fierce critic of the president, after years of ardently defending him.
