Former Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Taken Back Into Custody

Michael Cohen arrives at his Manhattan apartment in New York City on May 21, 2020. John Minchillo/AP Photo

Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump, was taken into custody on Thursday, the Bureau of Prisons told The Epoch Times.

Cohen “refused the conditions of his home confinement and as a result, has been returned to a BOP facility,” the bureau said in a statement.

Cohen, 53, was released to home confinement in May because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Federal officials have released 4,670 inmates to such confinement since Attorney General William Barr issued a memo on March 26, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Barr wrote in the memo that he was directing Michael Carvajal, the bureau’s director, to grant eligible prisoners home confinement in certain circumstances.

Carvajal was to give priority to the elderly and others most vulnerable to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, and to prisoners being held in low and minimum security prisons.

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer for President Donald Trump arrives at his Manhattan apartment after being released from federal prison to serve the remainder of his sentence under home confinement in New York City, N.Y., on May 21, 2020. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Cohen was spotted eating at Le Bilboquet, a restaurant in the Manhattan borough of New York City.

Photographs published by the New York Post, on July 3, showed the attorney at a table with two women, including his wife, and another man.

Cohen’s lawyer, Jeffrey Levine, defended the evening, telling the paper that Cohen “did not violate any of the terms and conditions of his release … and any assertion or suggestion to the contrary would be wholly inaccurate and untrue.”

Cohen also posted on social media on July 1 that he was “walking down Madison Avenue.”

Before his release, Cohen was being held in the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, Penn., a federal prison northwest of New York City, since May 2019.

He was sentenced to stay in prison until November 2021 after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion, and lying to Congress.