Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, will be released from his three-year prison sentence early because of concerns of the coronavirus continuing to spread behind bars, his lawyer said Thursday night.
Attorney Roger Bennett Adler said that Cohen, 53, will be allowed to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement. He'll be released May 1 after a two-week quarantine at the prison, Adler said.
Cohen was initially set to be released in November 2021.
The federal Bureau of Prisons approved the early release after Cohen's lawyers requested that he have his sentence cut short or serve the remainder at home because of unsafe prison conditions.
A March 30 statement on Cohen's Twitter page pointed out that infections had been confirmed at the upstate New York facility where he was being held.
On March 24, a federal judge had denied his request, calling it "just another effort to inject himself into the news cycle."
After that denial, Cohen had an "altercation" with another inmate and was put in solitary confinement, Adler said in an April 10 statement.
Cohen, 53, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, and lying to Congress about the president's business relationships in Russia.
He was being held at the Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville, in upstate New York.
The Bureau of Prisons has so far released 1,000 inmates nationwide to prevent the development of COVID-19 behind bars. It also suspended social visitation and limited inmates' movement.
As of Wednesday 451 federal inmates and 280 staff members have contracted the virus. Sixteen inmates have died, according to the bureau.
