Donald Trump’s Ex-Lawyer Michael Cohen Back in Federal Custody for Violating Terms of Early Prison Release

The former personal attorney for President Donald Trump has been taken back into federal custody after violating terms of his early release. Michael Cohen was arrested on Thursday, which his own lawyer said was a surprise decision that felt like “the rug had been pulled out from underneath” his client.

Cohen had been previously released in May from federal custody and ordered to stay in his Manhattan home, the Bureau of Prisons said, according to ABC News. He was one of several prisoners released by the Department of Justice as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. “On May 21, 2020, Mr. Cohen was placed on furlough pending placement on home confinement,” a Bureau of Prisons official said in a statement. “Today, Michael Cohen refused the conditions of his home confinement and as a result, has been returned to a BOP facility.”

Cohen’s attorney, Jeffrey Levine, said that “this is not what we came here to do today” after his client was taken back into custody. “We came here to work out the terms and conditions of his home confinement.” The stipulations of his confinement included having “no engagement of any kind with the media, including print, TV, film, books, or other forms of media/news,” as well as no social media, according to a source.

They went on to say that Cohen allegedly had a problem with the language and wanted to “work this out” before he was told to enter a waiting room. “The next thing we knew, 90 minutes later, the marshals are coming with the shackles. BOP just didn’t want to have anything to do with working any language out.”

Despite the terms of Cohen’s confinement, he had been regularly using his Twitter account since his release in May, not to mention an upcoming book deal he didn’t want to relinquish publishing rights to. He’s currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Back in 2018, Cohen admitted that he violated campaign finance laws over numerous payments made to women who were alleged having affairs with Trump years earlier 2016. He also admitted lying to Congress while under oath about a Moscow real estate project Trump and his company pursued at the same time he was attempting to secure the Republican nomination for president. “I knew what I was doing was wrong,” Cohen told ABC News back in December. “I stood up before the world and I accepted the responsibility for my actions.”