By Karen Freifeld
(Reuters) – Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, has been sent back to a prison in upstate New York after questioning a gag order as a condition of serving his criminal sentence under home confinement, Cohen’s lawyer said.
Cohen, 53, had attended a meeting with probation officers in Manhattan on Thursday when he was presented with a list of conditions for home confinement, including that he not engage with news media outlets, according to his lawyer, Jeffrey Levine.
After questioning it, Cohen was shackled, sent to a Manhattan jail and then transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, about 70 miles (110 km) northwest of New York City, where Levine said he is now being held under quarantine and in solitary confinement.
Cohen had been released from Otisville in May due to concerns over possible exposure to the novel coronavirus.
He had completed about a year of a three-year sentence for his role in hush money payments to two women, as well as for financial crimes and lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen had originally been eligible for release in November 2021.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
