July 10 (UPI) — Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, was taken back into federal custody on Thursday after having been released to home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cohen, 53, was in Manhattan federal court seeking to arrange the terms of his home confinement when he was placed in handcuffs and taken back into custody at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
“On May 21, 2020, Mr. Cohen was placed on furlough pending placement on home confinement,” the Bureau of Prisons said. “Today, Michael Cohen refused the conditions of his home confinement and as a result, has been returned to a BOP facility.”
One of Cohen’s attorneys, Jeffrey Levine, said Cohen sought to discuss stipulations of his home confinement that prevented him from engaging with media of any kind and using social media when he was taken back into custody.
“BOP just didn’t want to have anything to do with working any language out,” Levine said.
The BOP’s decision to take Cohen back into custody came on the same day that the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Trump must hand over the records under a subpoena from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance related to an investigation into “hush money” payments the president supposedly made to two women to keep extramarital affairs secret.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to coordinating the payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleged they had extramarital affairs with Trump.
Roger Adler, another attorney for Cohen, said he was concerned by the timing of BOP’s decision.
“The coincidence of the Supreme Court’s decisions and this action by the BOP under the supervision of Attorney General [William] Barr is, I find, unsettling and hopefully only coincidental,” Adler said.
