Published January 2, 2024
Michael Cohen lost an appeal on Tuesday in his crusade to hold former President Donald Trump liable for his prison sentence on campaign finance violations and tax crimes.
Cohen was convicted in 2018 and sentenced to serve three years in federal prison. He was released early in 2020 during the early days of the COVID pandemic after having only served a year.
Cohen claimed that he was jailed because Trump had retaliated against him because he was writing a tell-all book about his former boss.
He sought to sue Trump, but the case was dismissed. Cohen appealed.
According to Politico, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled Tuesday afternoon not to revive the case.
The judges agreed with a lower court ruling that existing laws do not “provide a damages remedy for most claims that someone was jailed in retaliation for their criticisms of a president,” Politico reported.
The dismissal is the end of the line for Cohen’s case.
Alina Habba, one of Trump’s current attorneys, celebrated the ruling in a comment obtained by The Hill.
“We are very pleased with today’s ruling. Mr. Cohen’s lawsuit was doomed from its inception,” Habba said.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.westernjournal.com
RELATED: Michael Cohen loses fight to revive retaliation claim against Trump
Published January 2, 2024
Michael Cohen, former President Trump’s ex-attorney, lost his appeal Tuesday to revive the claim that Trump retaliated against Cohen, using his presidential powers to jail him from promoting his book.
Cohen, who was often referred to as Trump’s “fixer,” pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress. While incarcerated, he began writing a tell-all book detailing his experiences with the former president.
The former Trump attorney was released in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the prison population. He was later returned to prison over a dispute about whether he could speak with the media about his upcoming book while in home confinement.
Cohen said he suffered physical ailments like headaches, shortness of breath and anxiety while spending almost all day in a small cell at the federal prison, where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees, Reuters reported.
A federal judge said in July 2020 that Cohen should return to home confinement. The ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging that Cohen was sent back to prison in retaliation for the book.
Cohen’s book “Disloyal: A Memoir” debuted at No. 1 on the Amazon bestseller list when it was released.
Cohen attempted to revive the retaliation claim against Trump, but a decision from U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman, a Trump-appointed lawyer, dismissed the complaint for the second time.
Liman first dismissed Cohen’s claims that putting him in solitary confinement conditions for 16 days violated the Constitution by undermining his free speech. He claimed it subjected him to an illegal seizure and cruel and unusual punishment, Reuters reported.
In the most recent dismissal, Liman again said Cohen does not have a viable claim to say a federal officer, on behalf of federal authority, violated the Constitution.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.thehill.com
RELATED: Michael Cohen Takes Feud With Donald Trump to Supreme Court
Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen arrives to meet with the Manhattan District Attorney on February 8, 2023, in New York City. Cohen told Newsweek on Tuesday that he plans to appeal a decision from a federal appeals court that rejected his efforts to revive the prison lawsuit against his former boss, and bring the matter all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES
Published January 2, 2024
Michael Cohen is taking his feud with former President Donald Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, told Newsweek on Tuesday that he plans to appeal a decision from a federal appeals court that rejected his efforts to revive the prison lawsuit against his former boss, and bring the matter all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The outcome is wrong if democracy is to prevail,” Cohen said in a statement. “A writ of habeas corpus cannot be the only consequence to stop a rogue president from weaponizing the Department of Justice from locking up his/her critics in prison because they refuse to waive their first amendment right. We will be filing a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court.”
Writ of certiorari is a request for the Supreme Court to order a lower court to send up the record of a case for review.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York affirmed a lower court’s decision on Tuesday, agreeing that Cohen cannot pursue damages to remedy his claims that Trump retaliated against him for promoting his tell-all book by throwing him back into prison after he criticized Trump.
While Cohen was incarcerated after pleading guilty to various crimes, he wrote the draft of his book, Disloyal, which detailed his experiences with Trump that he said would portray the former president in a negative light.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cohen was approved for early release and began home confinement in May 2020.
However, he was thrown back into prison two months later after a visit to a local U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services office, where he was presented with a location monitoring agreement that barred him from engaging with the media and from using social media ahead of his book’s release.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.newsweek.com
