Michael Cohen Taken Back Into Custody After Violating Terms of Early Release

Michael Cohen has been taken back into custody after refusing the “conditions of his home confinement,” the Federal Bureau of Prisons said on Thursday.

“Today, Michael Cohen refused the conditions of his home confinement and as a result, has been returned to a BOP facility,” the bureau said in a statement.

The former Trump lawyer had originally been released from prison in May to serve out his three-year sentence from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, tax evasion and campaign finance fraud involving hush-money payments to women who said they had affairs with Donald Trump, who has denied the accusations.

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Roger Adler, another attorney for Cohen, told TheWrap that it was not clear to him what “terms and conditions” Cohen had violated in light of photographs published in the New York Post last week, which showed him eating at a French restaurant near his apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“It came as a shock and surprise to me in view of the fact that while there were some newspaper stories in the NY Post indicating that he was out and about dining out at a sidewalk café near his house, that somehow that this ran afoul of the regulation,” Adler said.

Adler also suggested it was “unsettling and coincidental” that Cohen’s return back into custody came on the same day that the Supreme Court ruled Trump couldn’t block the release of his tax returns.

Another attorney for Cohen, Jeffrey Levine, told reporters outside the courthouse that he and Cohen objected to an agreement they were shown that said Cohen must not speak with reporters, post on social media or participate in any film or book project while serving out his sentence, according to CNBC. Though they requested the agreement be modified, Levine said no one came out to “re-engage” with them, CNBC also reported.

Before his early release, Cohen was expected to be finished serving his sentence in Nov. 2021.

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