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Michael Cohen has been in prison since May 2019
Former President Donald Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, sued the United States Attorney General over an alleged “gag order.”
Cohen said he was sent back to prison in retaliation for writing a revealing book that allegedly details the alleged racist comments made by the president.
Cohen had been released in May from a three-year sentence on charges including financial violations from the Trump campaign, due to the coronavirus.
The lawsuit claims that Cohen’s new arrest violates his right to freedom of expression.
The director of the Bureau of Prisons is named along with United States Attorney General William Barr in the lawsuit filed by attorneys for Cohen and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Monday. Lawyers have called for Cohen’s immediate release from prison.
The 53-year-old has a history of respiratory problems and is vulnerable to Covid-19, they said.
Cohen was detained again on July 9, after authorities said he rejected the conditions of his house arrest. Days earlier, on July 2, Cohen tweeted that a revealing book was “close to completion”.
In court documents filed Monday night, Cohen wrote that his book, tentatively titled Unfair: The True Story of Michael Cohen, former personal attorney for President Donald J Trump, will describe first-hand experiences with Trump and his family, he reported. the Washington Post. .
The book “will provide unflattering and graphic details about the president’s behavior behind closed doors,” according to the documents.
Among these details are descriptions of “the president’s anti-Semitic comments and virulently racist comments against black leaders such as President Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, neither of whom he viewed as real or worthy leaders by virtue of their race.”
Cohen’s lawyers said his constitutional rights were violated when probation officers asked him to sign a gag order that would prohibit him from “speaking through any medium of any kind,” including social media or publishing a book, such as condition for his release in prison. .
When Cohen sought clarification of this “unusual arrangement,” he was handcuffed and returned to federal prison in Otisville, New York, his lawyers said.
“The government cannot jail Michael Cohen for writing a book about President Trump,” said the director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, Ben Wizner.
“The gag order the government tried 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.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.
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Cohen campaigning with Trump in 2016
The White House has yet to comment on the allegations.
Cohen has served one year of his three-year sentence.
The former repairman admitted to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Moscow, and campaigning for financial infractions for his role in making silent payments to women who allege issues with Trump. He also admitted other charges of tax and bank fraud not related to the President.
