Michael Cohen sounds the alarm after court denies appeal: No Trump foe is safe
January 02, 2024
Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen on Tuesday lost his appeal to revive his lawsuit against the ex-president, CNN reported. He'd claimed Trump retaliated against him after he published a tell-all book revealing secret details gleaned from working with him.
The danger of the ruling is that it will ultimately usher in case law that prevents any kind of recourse for critics of officials if they end up being targeted, he warned.
"It's a terrible, terrible decision," Cohen told Raw Story after the decision was released. "This goes well past me. What happens if Trump comes into the White House? What happens if Ron DeSantis or any Trump 2.0 candidate comes into the White House and they decide they want to lock up Sarah Burris? Why? Because you wrote something nasty about them. It's something we've seen from the likes of Kim Jong Un or [Vladimir] Putin or [Viktor] Orbán."
Journalists writing for non-state outlets in Russia and Hungary have been targeted or jailed. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been in a Russian prison since March 2023. Putin has claimed he's a spy and not a reporter.
"How many Americans want Donald Trump to have the power to unilaterally incarcerate a critic?" Cohen also asked. "The answer should be no one."
READ MORE: Michael Cohen mocks Trump for 'not having the guts to appear'
According to Cohen, Trump tried to stop him from publishing a book or doing interviews by demanding he sign a document. When Cohen refused he was remanded back to prison, where he had been had been serving a three-year sentence for campaign finance violations.
"You could end up spending an inordinate amount of time in prison despite the fact that you're there because you wrote a book, and you refused to waive your First Amendment, constitutional rights," said Cohen.
Cohen explained he had already qualified for the release 2020 and was moving forward with the documentation. He was then called by the GEO Group, a third-party contractor for the Bureau of Prisons, to execute the documents and outfit Cohen with an ankle monitor.
That's when Adam Pakula, a probation officer with the United States Probation and Pretrial Services (“PTS”), told Cohen that he was taking over the release. Cohen was called down to the office and told that he must "sign paperwork," which would require Cohen to refrain from speaking to the media or publishing a book about Trump.
Paragraph one of the document, which Cohen refused to sign read:
[Signatory agrees that there will be] [n]o engagement of any kind with the media, including print, tv, film, books, or any other form of media/news. Prohibition from all social media platforms. No posting on social media and a requirement that you communicate with friends and family to exercise discretion in not posting on your behalf or posting an information about you. The purpose is to avoid glamorizing or bringing publicity to your status as a sentenced inmate serving a custodial term in the community.
No other document exists within the Bureau of Prisons or Department of Corrections that contains such language for release.
READ MORE: Michael Cohen: Trump mastered the art of the dodge to avoid accountability — until now
The two-page false Federal Location Monitoring Program Participant Agreement (FLM) given to Cohen also "contained grammatical and typographical errors," the suit said. "And had no legend identifying its federal form designation. It was clear to Mr. Cohen and his counsel that Defendants were hastily attempting to unlawfully restrict his right to free speech."
The actual document for FLM is over 25 pages long.
It was clear to Cohen and his counsel that Pakula had created this document as an attempt to unlawfully restrict his right to free speech; "an action that he knew had to have come from a higher authority."
Still, Pakula and Enid Febus, a supervisory probation officer, swore that it was a standard form.
Cohen refused to agree to it and was not only remanded back into prison but put in solitary confinement with poor ventilation and temperatures well over 100-degree heat during the oppressively hot July summer, he said.
Cohen filed a habeas corpus and was released 16 days later back to home confinement, which Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein agreed to restore his constitutional rights.
Judge Hellerstein went even further with the ruling, saying that Cohen was being retaliated against. The Second Circuit agreed and did not disagree with that fact, but claimed that the release via the writ of habeas corpus constituted a deterrence against these actions being repeated.
"They completely ignored Judge Hellerstein's decision," Cohen explained. "Trump is just, again, avoiding accountability and responsibility for his actions."
Now Cohen is on a mission to find the connection to who ordered the move. Two and a half years ago Cohen filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to find a connection to who ordered the move. The overarching concern is that if there is no deterrence, Trump will again use the same tactics to target others he perceives as enemies if elected in 2024.
"A lower court judge ruled (Liman) against Cohen, saying that Supreme Court precedent doesn’t allow him to pursue damages as a remedy for his claims. Tuesday, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed," said the CNN report.
“The outcome is wrong if democracy is to prevail," Cohen told Raw Story. "A writ of habeas corpus cannot be the only consequence to stop a rogue president from weaponizing the Department of Justice by 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."
The ruling from the three-judge panel is odd based on the 30-minute hearing done before the holidays.
Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, stated during the argument: “The complaint itself does not have facts that Trump did it. It’s a Michael Cohen assumption."
The panel, that rebuked her position did not give her the full five minutes to speak. Specifically, because she claimed that she was unaware of a recent decision regarding Trump in federal court that invalidated her argument.
At one point, Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the panel slapped himself on the forehead during remarks from the government's remarks. The slap was audible on the recording of the proceedings when Assistant U.S. Attorney Alyssa B. O'Gallagher argued that Cohen's successful writ of habeas corpus or use of the Bureau of Prison's administration remedies program would be enough to deter any similar actions in the future. To that, Cohen replied, "bulls--t."
Last week, news broke that Cohen used artificial intelligence to find cases to cite for the filing of early termination of supervised release. Cohen and his lawyer, E. Danya Perry, discovered the inaccurate cases and immediately alerted the court while providing alternative citations that validated the request. Neither the judge nor the Southern District of New York prosecutor, Nicholas Roos, discovered that the case citations were inaccurate, demonstrating that there was never any intent to deceive the judge or the court in what is routinely granted.
On Tuesday afternoon, Gilbert LLP, a Washington-based law firm representing Jon-Michael Dougherty, who represented Cohen before the appeals court, released a statement knocking the ruling.
"While we are of course disappointed at the Second Circuit's ruling, our consistent expectation has been that this novel issue involving the appropriate remedy against a rogue President who seeks to use the prisons to silence his personal critics would need to be addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court," Gilbert said.
"In America, an adequate remedy against this sort of abuse of power must deter future misconduct by federal officials," the statement continues. "This is the purpose of a Bivens remedy, as recognized by the District Court in its opinion, by the judges of the Second Circuit during oral argument, and by the Supreme Court in its recent Bivens decision. We look forward to taking the fight for Americans' right to speak freely about their government without fear of imprisonment to the highest court in the land."
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