Donald Trump Jailed a Critic During His First Term. Does the Supreme Court Care?

gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 190 points – Donald Trump Jailed a Critic During His First Term. Does the Supreme Court Care?
slate.com

Despite all the coverage of [Michael] Cohen, his unlawful imprisonment is an overlooked episode of the first Trump administration. A federal judge found that Cohen had been incarcerated in “retaliation” for his choice to speak critically of the president and ordered him to be released. But when Cohen filed a damages lawsuit against the individual officials responsible, two federal courts dismissed it, effectively ruling that there is no consequence for officials who imprison critics of the president.

We are hopeful these wrong decisions will be overturned by the United States Supreme Court. (One of us is Cohen’s attorney, and the other is his friend.) But whatever result the court process yields, every American should be alert to the danger this case represents.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240815230902/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/08/michael-cohen-fights-donald-trump-supreme-court.html

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Huh, and I thought he was jailed because of all the increasingly shady and illegal shit he did alongside the orange turd.

That’s not what this is about.

Here’s the relevant section of the article that explains why a federal judge ruled that he was unlawfully detained:

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and while serving a sentence at Otisville Federal Correctional Institution, Michael Cohen was granted a release to home confinement. (Cohen was serving a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to crimes that included campaign finance violations on behalf of Trump.) Then Cohen announced his intention to publish a book about then-President Donald Trump. The result: Cohen was presented by prison officials with a document that conditioned his release on his agreement not to publish the book (and not to speak publicly otherwise about his experiences with and his opinions of the president). After Cohen and his attorney raised questions about this nondisclosure agreement, Cohen’s release was revoked. He was then returned to federal prison and placed in solitary confinement for more than two weeks.

Man I hope this mfer has security, because from Trump's perspective, he's a bad penny that just won't go away

Totally. He and his family have already been doxxed and threatened repeatedly.

The guy did some bad shit, but he paid the price, and has clearly been making a genuine effort to make it right. Everybody deserves a second chance and to not have their families dragged in the mud.