The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s case against his one-time boss.
Cohen alleged former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and other federal officials put him back in prison as retaliation for promoting a book critical of Trump.
“[A]s it stands, this case represents the principle that presidents and their subordinates can lock away critics of the executive without consequence,” Cohen’s petition states.
Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) urged the Supreme Court not to take the case. Trump’s attorneys argued that Cohen’s complaint was “entirely devoid of merit.”
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals previously affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss Cohen’s lawsuit.
A judge sentenced Cohen in 2018 to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance violations and lying to Congress.
While he was released to home confinement in May 2020, Cohen was later returned to prison and placed in solitary confinement. Cohen was sent back after he would not sign an agreement barring him from posting on social media or engaging with the media, according to his petition.
A federal judge ruled in July 2020 that Cohen must be returned to home confinement, finding his time in jail was retaliation over “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,” according to CBS News.
Earlier this year, Cohen testified as a witness in Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump.
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