Donald Trump blocked the prison release of his former attorney, Michael Cohen, a petition to the Supreme Court has claimed.
Cohen is seeking damages from Trump and other federal officials who allegedly conspired to keep him in prison as punishment for writing about Trump in his memoir.
Cohen’s counsel, Jon-Michael Dougherty, filed the brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.
“The issue is whether the government can revoke a prisoner’s approved release to home confinement as punishment for his speech criticizing the president and to prevent further such speech,” Dougherty wrote.
Donald Trump gestures while speaking at a campaign rally at the Bayfront Convention Center on September 29, 2024 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, claims that Trump conspired to keep him in prison.
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He compared the importance of the case to the Supreme Court’s legalization of same sex marriage in the Obergefell case.
“This case is analogous to this Court’s seminal cases protecting Americans’ rights, the sorts of cases this Court has not hesitated to review over the centuries. See, e.g., Obergefell v. Hodges,” Dougherty wrote.
The brief asks the justices to accept the case.
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump’s attorney on Wednesday.
A federal appeals court has already rejected Cohen’s attempt to revive his lawsuit against Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr and other Justice Department officials for allegedly retaliating against him for promoting his anti-Trump memoir.
Cohen, who served time in federal prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, said that he was put into solitary confinement for speaking critically about the former president. His release was quickly ordered after a federal judge found the action “retaliatory,” but Cohen later sued, arguing that his constitutional rights had been violated.
In January, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court judge who ruled against Cohen, acknowledging that while Cohen’s release “may not have made Cohen whole,” there’s nothing in the law that would entitle him to damages.
In his latest filing, Dougherty said that a federal judge has already recognized that Cohen’s solitary confinement was a retaliatory measure and that the Supreme Court should protect people from wrongful government behavior.
“What this case is about is the balance between fundamental constitutional rights and Executive power. It asks whether the courts will provide a deterrent remedy when Executive power tramples those rights in ways that would have been unimaginable to every generation of American past and present. It is about the exercise of a type of power with which the Founders were well-acquainted and against which they fought a war for independence,” Dougherty wrote.
“It involves the sitting President personally and unlawfully intervening to hold a United States citizen in prison for criticizing him,” he added, noting that there was “a grave risk that a failure to deter that conduct” could “chill the exercise of fundamental liberty.”
