Cohen v USA -lawsuit filed in SDNY -civil rights, Federal Torts -Trump & Barr violated Cohen’s Constitutional Right

Cohen hired one of New York’s top civil rights attorney and the complaint is compelling and you should read it

Michael Cohen v USA Trump and Barr

As many of you might know earlier this afternoon a federal lawsuit was filed concerning the likely civil rights violation of Michael Cohen. Full disclosure I do consider Andy Laufer a friend. But in the interest of transparency, felt I obligated that, before we dissect this complaint. Also you can follow Andy on Twitter @lauferlaw —notwithstanding I will try to compartmentalize my obvious bias towards Andy Laufer. I’ll do my best to stick to the facts as elucidated in today’s Filing. You can pull the recently filed Federal Lawsuit via ECF-SDNY or you can pull down the filing via my Scribd Link.

Background of Michael Cohen and being sent back to Ottisville.

In the mid Summer of 2020, then Attorney General took an obvious and personal interest in Michael Cohen’s case. Understand that this is not me saying that I 100% agree with how Cohen has conducted himself. Conversely I absolutely think it’s important to establish a solid foundational/background of why today’s lawsuit was filed. Again in mid-Summer of 2020 Attorney General Barr and more broadly the Department of Justice took a highly unusual step of failing to inform the Court they were going to placed Mr. Cohen into the Custody of the U.S. Marshal and return him to Otisville. You read more here

It is also important to understand why Michael Cohen was released and allowed to serve the rest of his sentence vis-a-vis home confirment. Here context and content are not mutually exclusive.

Unquestionably New York City (and the State of New York) went through COVID-19 hell and back. A lot of Americans, specifically New Yorkers lost their lives due to COVID-19. One thing you should know about New Yorkers -they are tough as nails but even COVID-19 tested their toughness. In the end New Yorkers emerged from the other side of the near insurmountable COVID-19 Mountain.

Donald Trump via his consigliere Bill Barr

…essentially (or at least they tried to) extort Cohen into signing an onerous and one-sided non-disclosure agreement. Cohen refused, as that non-disclosure agreement would have put a significant constraint on his First Amendment Rights, among other constitutional rights. Cohen’s refusal meant that Attorney General Barr dispatched the U.S. Marshals to remand Cohen. This kind of egregious Abuse of Power/Office established a strong very predicate that Cohen was being targeted at the behest (and most likely) at the direction of Donald J Trump. In an effort to silence Mr. Cohen’s voice and deprive him of a fundamental constitutional right, that is “freedom of speech”

To reiterate Cohen was originally released on “compassionate grounds” largely because of COVID-19. I now direct your attention to page 2, paragraph 5 -which reads in part:

In April 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP)…determined that Cohen was a high risk for serious illness and death related to the COVID-19 …he was later released and outfitted with a GPS monitor

Importantly and notable, because the FBOP had previously made this designation —Generally speaking this afforded defendants like Cohen to potentially serve the remainder of their sentence via home confinement. Because numerous Federal Judges repeatedly ordered the BOP to proffer their COVID-19 mitigation plan. And to be clear, there were countless Defendants that were afforded this designation and not a single one was forced to return to prison. Only Michael Cohen.

🌶Spicy Sidebar🌶 for those of you who followed me on Twitter then you’ll recall the numerous threads and incalculable amount of solid research I tweeted concerning the GEO Group. I’m sure there’s an archive of those threads but the point is under the Trump Administration; The GEO Group was awarded numerous and highly lucrative contracts.

🌶 Importantly though is during the Obama Administration, the FBOP sought to exit the contracts it had with several privately run “federal “ prisons. See August 2016 DOJ-OIG Report that particular report, not only validated numerous concerns the Obama Administration had with private versus public prisons. The issues articulated in the aforementioned DOJ-OIG report;

• primarily the cost differential between a Government run Prison versus a Privately Run prison.

• extensive data that prisoners in privately run facilities had a disproportionate number of assault cases and guards at privately run prisons assaulted inmates at a much higher percentage than Federally run prisons.

• lack of properly trained staff and over all staff turnover for privately run prisons.

These are just a few assessment, which are based solely from my first hand knowledge of reading the various BOP reports, DOJ-OIG BOP reports found here

Trump to Cohen shut up or go back to jail…

When reading pages 3-4 of the Complaint -that gives you a decent chain of events and what I can only described as the FBOP lured Cohen to their offices under the false pretense that they needed him to come down “in person to sign paperwork”

The run up to July 9, 2020 it is important to remember that Mr Cohen made several appearance on Cable News shows, utilized Twitter to “tease” out the upcoming publication of his “tell all book”. Ironically, at no time did the FBOP or US Probation or prosecutors make an official determination that Cohen had broken the terms and conditions of his release. Thus forfeiting Cohen’s ability to serve out the rest of his term via home confinement. And that’s an important data point to remember as you read the complaint.

Under false pretense, the FBOP informed Mr Cohen that he needed to “sign papers” —Cohen was forced to wait for the defendants (collectively) to “confer” when in fact the purpose to lure Cohen to a Federal Building was to take him back in to custody. The issue here is yes every defendant is afforded some constitutional rights. Notably because the FBOP had previously made the designation, that Mr Cohen in a “high risk category”—which could result in serious medical issues or death, should Cohen become infected with COVID-19 virus.

On that fateful July 2020 day — Cohen’s civil rights were trampled on because Donald Trump feared that Cohen would further expose Trump. Specifically Trump’s duplicitous actions, his proclivity to be “drunk on power” —after all Trump repeatedly stated “I’m president and you’re not” -once Mr Cohen was sent back to Ottisville, and based on the FBOP COVID-19 mitigation protocols this required Mr Cohen to be sent to “isolation” which is a fancy way of saying Mr Cohen was in quarantine. 16 days. Yes 16 days Mr Cohen was forced into isolation.

Being in isolation isn’t exactly the same as being in “the SHU” based on my knowledge of our Federal Prison system, this likely meant Mr Cohen spent 22 to 23 hours per day alone. Now just imagine what that kind of extreme isolation can have on a person’s mental health. And as further alleged in the Complaint on July 23, 2020 a Federal Judge ordered the immediate release of Mr Cohen. In the Court’s written Order/Memorandum. Further the Federal District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein stated in Open Court;

“I make the finding that the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory…And it’s retaliatory because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and to discuss anything about the book or anything else he wants on social media and with others.>.In 21 years of being a judge and sentencing people and looking at the terms and conditions of supervised release…I have never seen such a clause.”

Again you can pull down today’s filing via ECF-SDNY or via my Scribd Link - one thing I will say is Donald Trump weaponized our Department of Justice and Bill Barr was Trump’s personal consigliere and the targeted relation toward Mr Cohen is just another prime example of why we need more civil rights attorneys like Andy.

Starting on page 10 thru 23 - Factual Allegations- Rightfully so Mr Cohen’s attorneys concisely explained why Trump would take unusually and frankly unprecedented retaliatory actions against Mr. Cohen. —in short Cohen offered a rare and unique perspective that only a “real insider” would have. And that alone was a major threat to Trump. Because the truth is Donald Trump’s Cryptonight.

July 23, 2020 Cohen’s Injunction granted

Again because the Government was ordered and enjoined from continuing any and all including future) retaliatory actions again Mr Cohen — ORDER GRANTING PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION granting 4 Motion for TRO. Upon the findings and conclusions stated on the record at oral argument conducted telephonically on July 23, 2020, Petitioner Michael D. Cohen's motion for injunctive relief… granted…

…Respondents are hereby enjoined from any continuing or future retaliation against Cohen for exercising his First Amendment rights. Respondents are directed to provide Cohen with a COVID-19 test at his place of detention no later than tomorrow morning, July 24, 2020, to report the results of that test to Cohen and to his Probation Officer promptly when they become available, and to release Cohen from custody to any member of his immediate family at the place of his detention at or before 2:00 p.m. tomorrow, July 24, 2020.

Summary and what comes next.

Trump knows that Cohen’s unique position to essentially know “where all the bodies are buried”. In Donald Trump’s universe Mr Cohen was in the inner, and I mean inner circle. And the book Cohen wrote, unquestionably would shine a blinding spotlight on to Trump’s malignant narcissist and authoritarian tendencies/behavior. All of which is incongruent with our “Rule of Law” and completely incapable with our Judicial system.

So what did Trump and Barr do? They abused their Power/Office to further punish Mr Cohen. And now it’s going to cost them. The complaint makes several references to Mr Cohen’s 2019 Congressional Testimony and I think it would be worthwhile for you to refresh your memory of his Congressional Testimony.

And lastly I make no opinion on the validity of the factual allegations beyond nearly all of them are supported by facts, many of which are in the public domain. The bottom like is Trump nearly silenced Mr Cohen -for good- and had it not been for Cohen’s previous defense team and a Federal Judge adjudicating and going on the record saying, in part; that remanding Cohen was “retaliatory” —then I’m not sure how strong this lawsuit would be.

Whereas you’ll note this is a really well argued and thought out complaint. I actually hope Mr Cohen wins because Donald has to know that discovery will be very and I mean very bad for him. Not to belabor this point but, Andy Laufer is a well known and highly successful litigant who primarily focuses on Civil Rights.

As warranted I’ll do my best to provide updates. But for now it’s best we wait and see because undoubtedly Trump and Barr will likely move to dismiss this Complaint or Trump will argue his feigned “absolute immunity”, “sovereign immunity” and/or Executive Privilege…none of those predicable arguments will be persuasive and the best route would be Trump/Barr settle this out of court because as I said discovery will be lit…

-Filey

ps -please excuse my brevity and spelling errors -I literally highlighted, drafted and edited this article on my iPhone as I am presently in the General Assembly’s anteroom. I have never mix my work electronics with my personal extracurricular activities. So this article might have a higher than normal spelling errors but due to the time sensitivity I wanted my readers to have (almost) immediate access to today’s filing. Again as I previously disclosed I consider Andy Laufer a friend and I attempted to bifurcate my personal feelings and solely focused on the facts in today’s complaint. But for now I have to dash to a 6:25PM Committee hearing. Which makes me unavailable until after 9PM this evening .