The American Civil Liberties Union and a law firm representing Michael Cohen filed a lawsuit late Monday seeking the release of Donald Trump’s former personal attorney from prison and his return to home confinement.
The lawsuit argues that Cohen’s reimprisonment earlier this month was retaliation for his plans to publish a tell-all book about the president before the November election. The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, names Attorney General William Barr and the director of the Bureau of Prisons.
“The First Amendment forbids Respondents from imprisoning Mr. Cohen in retaliation for drafting a book about the President and for seeking to publish that book soon,” the suit says.
Yet Cohen is “being held in retaliation for his protected speech, including drafting a book manuscript that is critical of the President — and recently making public his intention to publish that book soon, shortly before the upcoming election,” it adds.
The suit includes the first bombshell glimpses of what Cohen plans for the book.
It “describes the President’s pointedly anti-Semitic remarks and virulently racist remarks against such Black leaders as President Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, neither of whom he viewed as real leaders or as worthy of respect by virtue of their race,” the filing states.
Cohen was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, in May to serve out his three-year sentence in home confinement because of the risk of contracting COVID-19 in prison. He had spent a year behind bars after pleading guilty to a series of crimes, including campaign finance violations linked to hush-money payments during Trump’s 2016 campaign to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.
But Cohen was taken back into custody July 9 during a routine appearance in the federal courthouse and reincarcerated just days after he was photographed dining in a Manhattan restaurant. The lawsuit claims the outing did not violate the terms of his home confinement.
Before Cohen was taken into custody, he and his attorney were presented with a gag order that barred Cohen from having any “engagement of any kind with the media,” including books, and prohibited him from posting on social media, according to the suit. Cohen was arrested immediately after he balked at agreeing to the order, the suit states.
The court action argues that federal authorities planned to take action to reimprison Cohen after he promised in tweets that he would “speak soon,” and that he was finishing his Trump book.
Cohen has been held in solitary confinement since he was returned to Otisville, according to the suit. He’s now struggling with spiking blood pressure, “leading to severe headaches, shortness of breath and anxiety,” the suit says. He has made no progress on the book, according to the suit.
The Department of Justice has not commented on the action.