Michael Cohen to be released from prison for home confinement

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, will be released early from prison to serve the rest of his three-year sentence at his home amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a source familiar with his change in confinement. He is currently incarcerated at Otisville Federal Correctional Institution, which is located about 70 miles outside of New York City.

Before he’s released, Cohen will first have to quarantine for 14 days at the prison. According to the Bureau of Prisons, 14 inmates and seven staff members have tested positive for coronavirus. 

CNN first reported on Cohen’s home confinement. 

In March, Cohen had sought to have his sentence reduced or to serve the balance of his sentence in home confinement because of the burgeoning threat posed by COVID-19. The court denied his application, expressing the view that his request was “just another effort to inject himself into the news cycle”and also noted he was ineligible for compassionate release and had not exhausted his administrative remedies. 

But since then, the Bureau of Prisons has taken more aggressive action to stop the spread of coronavirus within prisons. The Bureau of Prisons announced on March 31 that it would begin confining federal inmates to their cells for 14 days. 

Other high-profile criminals have sought early release due to coronavirus, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was serving a seven-year sentence at a federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, for bank fraud and tax evasion.

In December 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years for financial and campaign finance crimes and lying to Congress about his involvement in an effort to build a “Trump Tower” in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. The campaign finance violations involved his arrangement of hush-money payments to two women hush money during the 2016 campaign regarding their alleged affairs with Mr. Trump. 

Clare Hymes contributed reporting.