Trump’s Former Personal Lawyer Michael Cohen Set for Prison Release on Friday

NEW YORK, KOMPAS.com — Former Personal Lawyer to President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, has been issued for prison release on Friday by a judge.

The decision was made on Thursday.

The judge stated that the US government retaliated against Michael Cohen who is planning to release a book critical of President Donald Trump before the upcoming November US election.

Michael Cohen was ordered back to prison on July 9 after probation authorities said he refused to sign a form banning the former personal lawyer from publishing the book or communicating publicly in other manners.

Read also: Mary Trump’s Book on President Donald Trump Hits Book Sales Gold

That decision was viewed as a violation of Michael’s First Amendment rights.

The information was shared by US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein during a telephone conference.

Michael Cohen will be released from prison and to home confinement by Friday at 2:00pm local time.

“How can I take any other inference than that it’s 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?" said Alvin.

In ruling, Alvin Hellerstein said he made the “finding that the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory.”

He added: “And it’s retaliatory for his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish the book.”

Michael Cohen, 53, sued federal prison officials and Attorney General William Barr on Monday, saying he was ordered back to prison because he was writing a book: “Disloyal: The True Story of Michael Cohen, Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.”

The Bureau of Prisons issued a spirited defense of its intentions after the ruling Thursday, calling any assertion that the reimprisonment of Cohen “was a retaliatory action is patently false.”