Michael Cohen sent back to jail after vowing to release book exposing Trump's racism, lawsuit argues

ACLU joins petition demanding First Amendment freedoms for president’s former ‘fixer’

Attorneys for Donald Trump’s former lawyer have demanded his immediate release from prison, claiming he was taken back into custody because he began promoting a tell-all book he was planning to publish about the president.

Michael Cohen, who previously described himself as Mr Trump’s personal “fixer” and was sentenced to three years in jail for providing false statements to Congress, tax fraud and campaign finance violations, received a furlough from the Bureau of Prisons in May at the request of his lawyers, citing the coronavirus pandemic and his risk of contracting Covid-19 in prison.

Cohen and his attorneys were at a federal courthouse earlier this month so he could be fitted for an electronic monitoring device, as well as to transfer his status from furlough to home confinement, when he was taken into custody by US Marshals.

Probation officers were requesting Cohen sign a Federal Location Monitoring Agreement form, which included a provision described as unusual by experts. The provision would bar him from speaking to the press or posting on social media, CNN reported.

While his attorneys told the news outlet they did not refuse to sign the agreement, instead requesting they check whether the provision could be removed, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson said Cohen was detained after he “declined to agree to the terms required for the programme and home confinement placement”.

Cohen’s lawyers filed a petition on Monday afternoon that named US Attorney General William Barr, Bureau of Prisons director Michael Carvajal and the warden of the federal prison where their client was held in Otisville, New York.

The petition, which has been backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argued Cohen was “being held in retaliation for his protected speech, including drafting a book manuscript that is critical of the President — and recently making public his intention to publish that book soon, shortly before the upcoming election”.

Cohen had been tweeting out his support for the president’s niece, Mary Trump, who went through a bevy of legal challenges before she could publish her own tell-all book about her uncle, titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

He also expressed on social media that he was planning to release a book about the president, with the lawsuit indicating it would reveal how Mr Trump made racist comments about Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela.

The ACLU confirmed it was joining the petition in a statement on Monday night that read: “We're suing the federal government for imprisoning Michael Cohen in retaliation for his plans to publish a book critical of Trump.”

The group added: “We will defend the First Amendment from government censorship — as we have for a century now.”

Cohen’s lawsuit also argued against the White House’s apparent attempts to quash other books about the president prior to their release, citing Mr Trump’s niece, as well as his former national security adviser John Bolton, who published a book about his tenure in the administration earlier this year.