Michael Cohen Released to Home Confinement Because of COVID-19 Concerns
A federal judge in March had denied Cohen's request for a reduced sentence as "just another effort to inject himself into the news cycle."
May 21, 2020 at 12:17 PM
4 minute read
The original version of this story was published on New York Law Journal
Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, was released Thursday from a federal prison in New York, capping a back-and-forth effort to have him serve out the rest of his sentence from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cohen's attorney, Roger Adler, confirmed that his client had been released to home confinement from FCI Otisville, where he had been serving a three-year sentence for crimes related to hush-money payments he made to two women who had accused Trump of engaging in an extramarital affair, accusations that Trump has forcefully denied.
Adler said that Cohen, who had once considered himself Trump's "fixer," arrived home Thursday morning, but did not provide additional comment on his release. The former Trump ally had implicated his former boss in the payoff scheme when he pleaded guilty in 2018, and is said to be writing a tell-all book about the president.
The federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to a request for comment.
Cohen's release comes amid reports of confusion at the BOP over how to implement Justice Department directives aimed at reducing the federal prison population in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
A federal judge in March had denied Cohen's request for a reduced sentence as "just another effort to inject himself into the news cycle." However, Adler told media outlets in April that the BOP had approved his client for release after a 14-day quarantine period.
At the time, the BOP said that a "majority" of the inmates at Otisville's minimum-security prison camp were being moved to the main facility for screening to determine whether they would qualify for home confinement or furlough. Weeks later, though, Cohen remained at Otisville, and his status was unclear until Wednesday night, when The Wall Street Journal first reported that he would be released Thursday to serve out the remainder of his sentence in home confinement.
His sentence is set to run through November 2021.
The confusion at Otisville was not unique to Cohen's case. Dean Skelos, the former majority leader of the New York state Senate, and Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, were both among the high-profile, white-collar prisoners at Otisville who were initially told they would be released, but were later informed that their status remained under review by the BOP, according to their lawyers.
Prosecutors said in court filings that the BOP didn't think the men would be eligible for home confinement in light of updated guidance from Attorney General William Barr that inmates not be granted release unless they had served half of their sentence in prison.
Last week, Paul Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign, was released from a low-security prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, to serve the rest of his own seven-and-a-half-year sentence from his home in Virginia, leading to speculation that Cohen was being punished for speaking out against Trump.
Manafort's legal team, however, said that he qualified for release because his age and underlying medical conditions made him particularly vulnerable to the virus.
Since late March, at least 2,471 of 169,000 federal inmates have been released to home confinement.
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