Michael Cohen Sues Donald Trump and the Feds, Claims Second Prison Stint Was Retaliation for Tell-All Book

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Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer,” filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr, the federal government, and others claiming they conspired to throw him back in prison as retaliation for publishing a tell-all book.

Cohen was released from prison to home confinement in April of 2020, to continue serving out a three-year sentence for lying to Congress and committing campaign finance violations on Trump’s behalf.

In July of 2020, Cohen was returned to prison. According to Insider, Cohen was told by federal authorities that a new condition of his home confinement would be “that Cohen could have ‘no engagement of any kind’ with the media and ‘no posting on social media.’”

Cohen had been teasing that he was writing a tell-all on social media after returning home. He claimed that after asking for clarification from his probation officer, who is one of the subjects of the lawsuit, he was abruptly thrown back in jail.

The first sixteen days of his renewed jail time were served in solitary confinement.

A judge later that month ordered him released, reportedly instructing the government against “any continuing or future retaliation against Cohen for exercising his First Amendment rights.”

“I’ve never seen such a clause in 21 years of being a judge and sentencing people and looking at terms of supervised release,” the judge who released Cohen said. “Why would the Bureau of Prisons ask for something like this… unless there was a retaliatory purpose?

Cohen is reportedly seeking unspecified damages from the Trump, Barr, and the federal government.

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