President Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was taken back to a federal jail on Thursday after refusing to agree to a gag order as a condition of serving his criminal sentence under home confinement. Cohen’s lawyer, Jeffrey Levine, said that his client was taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
Cohen, 53, had been released from a federal prison in upstate New York in May due to concerns over possible exposure to the novel coronavirus. He had completed about a year of a three-year sentence for his role in hush money payments to two women, as well as for financial crimes and lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen had originally been eligible for release in November 2021.
On Thursday, he was ordered to a federal courthouse in Manhattan to convert his furlough to home confinement. Levine said they were presented with an agreement that barred Cohen from having any contact with news media organizations, TV, film or book publishing outlets, or from posting on social media. After objecting, Levine said the U.S. Marshals Service came with “shackles” and ordered Cohen remanded to the jail in Brooklyn because he failed to agree to the terms.
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