Free Again, Ex-Trump Lawyer Cohen Seeks Deal for Going on TV

(Bloomberg) -- Now that Michael Cohen is out of prison once again, the former lawyer to President Donald Trump has a week to negotiate terms of his remaining sentence in home detention, including making television appearances.

A federal judge ordered Cohen’s release Thursday after ruling the U.S. Justice Department had illegally returned him to prison in retaliation for his plans to write a tell-all book critical of Trump and to discuss it on social media. Cohen’s son picked him up Friday outside a medium-security federal lockup 75 miles from Manhattan, said his lawyer, Danya Perry.

Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to crimes tied to his work for Trump, “is extremely gratified that the court upheld his fundamental constitutional right to speak freely and publicly, and he looks forward to doing exactly that,” Perry said in an email.

The former Trump fixer had been released in May to serve the rest of his sentence at home due to the coronavirus pandemic. But he was unexpectedly sent back to prison earlier this month during a routine meeting with probation officers, not long after he revealed his planned book to the public. He’s due to be released in November 2021.

The judge gave Cohen and the government until July 31 to strike a deal on a key provision of his home-confinement relating to interactions with the press, such as whether he can appear on news programs as a political consultant. That was one example that came up at a hearing Thursday. Perry declined to say what other terms might come up in the talks given the force of the judge’s ruling.

“It’s not clear what their interest or their goal is here, so I think it’s for the government to articulate what goal would be served by any restriction on his speech, then tailor an appropriate condition,” Perry said.

The judge supported one sentence from the provision, which said Cohen should “avoid glamorizing or bringing publicity” to his home-confinement status. The two sides must now work out what that means without violating Cohen’s First Amendment rights.

In a court filing challenging Cohen’s release, the government said Cohen disputed every element of his home-confinement deal at the meeting with probation officers, saying it would prevent him from writing his book and asking hypothetically “whether he could appear as a political correspondent on television or radio.”

The Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons both denied that Cohen was being retaliated against and said he was thrown back in prison for refusing to sign the agreement for home confinement and being “intransigent.” Neither immediately returned requests for comment on the negotiations.

Perry said Cohen’s book is still on track to be published in September, even with the interruption from his unexpected return to prison and clash with the Justice Department.

“I think he now has a new chapter that he’s going be working on,” she said.

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