Cohen has been in solitary confinement, according to his lawyer.
Michael Cohen alleges that he was sent back to federal prison and placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for a revealing book about the president he intends to publish, according to a lawsuit filed by the disgraced attorney.
Cohen filed the lawsuit in New York Federal Court Monday against United States Attorney General William Barr, the United States Bureau of Prisons, and the Guardian of the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, where he is currently confined. Cohen, alleging that his arrest is in “retaliation for his protected speech.”
Cohen, who is serving a three-year sentence for violating campaign finance laws and lying to Congress, was sent back to the facility on July 9 after spending two months without permission in home confinement.
He alleges in the lawsuit that United States probation officers offered him “an unconstitutional lawsuit” where he was prohibited from speaking to the media in any way. That stipulation included a book Cohen has been writing for the past year in which he claims he will reveal new details about the president during his decade as Trump’s attorney, according to the lawsuit.
“The First Amendment prohibits respondents from jailing Mr. Cohen in retaliation for writing a book about the President and for trying to publish that book soon,” the lawsuit said.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons told ABC News in a statement that it does not comment on pending litigation. Representatives from Barr’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department expelled Cohen, 53, from prison and left him at his Manhattan home in May for concerns about the coronavirus at federal detention centers. The lawsuit said he had been working on his manuscript shortly after it was shipped to the Otisville facility in 2019 and he complied with prison rules.
“Mr. Cohen did most of his writing with the naked eye in the law library. In fact, Otisville staff, including Camp Administrator Robert Schreffler and Correctional Counselor James DeLeo, explicitly informed Mr. Cohen that they knew I was writing a book. ” said the suit.
The lawsuit says the book will detail Trump’s behavior behind closed doors, such as “making certain anti-Semitic statements against prominent and virulently racist Jews against black leaders such as President Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela.”
Cohen continued working on the manuscript after it was suspended and joked about the book on his Twitter account on July 2, according to the lawsuit.
During a July 9 meeting with probation officers to formalize the terms of the homebound on July 9, Cohen and his attorney asked for clarification on the homebound demands that restricted his public comments. According to the lawsuit, probation officers said their request would be sent “up the chain of command” for a decision. Cohen and his lawyer remained in a waiting room for about an hour and a half and never received a clarification or agreement to sign before agents stopped him again, the lawsuit alleges.
During a court hearing on July 9, Cohen and his attorney asked for clarification on the home-confinement claims, and probation officers said their request would be sent “to the chain of command” for a decision, according to the demand. Cohen and his attorney remained in a waiting room for about an hour and a half before officers stopped him again, the lawsuit alleges.
He currently lives alone in a 12-by-8-foot cell in prison, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit contends that Cohen never refused to sign the agreement on his confinement rules, and the Prison Office’s statements about his conduct and responses to court orders are false.
Two other books on the President have presented legal challenges, including “The Room Where It Happened” by former National Security Adviser John Bolton and “Too Much and Never Enough” by Mary Trump, the President’s niece. Both have been published.
“The government’s effort to exercise prior restraint on Mr. Cohen’s book is only the latest of the Trump Administration’s efforts to censor speech that is negatively reflected in Trump or his Administration,” the Cohen lawsuit said.
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