Donald Trump “cannot jail Michael Cohen for writing a book,” a senior official with the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday night as the organization filed a lawsuit against the federal government.
In a July 2 tweet, Cohen said he was “near the end of my book, the planned release date will be in late September.” A week later, the former Trump chief aide was returned to prison after being released due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The ACLU lawsuit against Attorney General William Barr and the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) follows court battles involving John Bolton, a former national security adviser, and Mary Trump, the president’s niece . They defeated attempts to stop publication by the White House and the Trump family, respectively, and saw their revealing books become instant bestsellers.
Cohen, 53, a former Trump personal lawyer and repairman, was convicted of crimes including lying to Congress and facilitating illegal payments to silence two women who alleged issues with Trump, filmmaker and adult actor Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. .
Trump denies the issues and orders the payments.
Cohen went to prison in May 2019. He was released a year later, due to the coronavirus pandemic, and hoped to complete his three-year sentence at his home. Last week, however, the BOP said Cohen had “rejected the conditions of his home confinement and as a result had been returned to a BOP facility.”
Those conditions, which many observers said were unusual, included banning Cohen from speaking to the media or publishing his book. Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, noted that Cohen had been allowed to speak to the media at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York.
Now, the ACLU and the law firm Perry Guha LLP have filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in New York. According to the lawsuit, Cohen is being held in solitary confinement in a federal prison in New York State.
“He is being detained in retaliation for his protected speech,” the lawsuit says, “including drafting a manuscript of the book that criticizes the president, and recently made public his intention to publish that book soon, shortly before the upcoming president elections. Trump. “
Cohen’s book promises to combine elements from Bolton’s close access account and Mary Trump’s description of the president’s personal behavior.
Cohen, the lawsuit says, “will tell the American people about Trump’s personality and leanings, his private and professional affairs, and his personal and business ethics.”
Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project, told CNN: “The government cannot jail Michael Cohen for writing a book about President Trump.”
According to the lawsuit, “The gag order the government attempted to impose on Cohen was a prior unconstitutional restriction, and his continued imprisonment is part of a dangerous pattern of retaliation against Trump’s critics.”
In a tweet last week, Davis compared his client’s treatment to another former assistant to the president, Roger Stone.
Stone, 67, was saved from prison for an act of clemency, shortly before he appeared in jail after being found guilty of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and intimidation of witnesses.
Stone’s conviction remains, but most observers said he was being rewarded for not attacking Trump during the Russia investigation, as Cohen did.
Trump, Davis said, “can try to intimidate Michael Cohen by sending him back to jail to try to prevent him from telling the truth in his next book while rewarding Roger Stone for lying about Trump’s knowledge of Russian meddling.”
“But Michael Cohen will not let Donald Trump intimidate him. I look forward to the publication of … the detailed daily, hourly, minute-by-minute evidence of Donald Trump’s lies and crimes under New York State law. “
When working for Trump, Cohen was known to intimidate and intimidate those who crossed paths with his boss.
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