Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer. Photo: Richard Drew/AP

Manhattan federal prosecutors on Monday asked a federal judge to deny Michael Cohen's request to serve out the remainder of his three-year prison sentence from home amid the deepening coronavirus outbreak, saying the former lawyer and "fixer" to President Donald Trump was at no more risk than his fellow inmates.

Cohen's attorney, Roger Bennet Adler, had argued in a March 17 letter to U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley of the Southern District of New York that the Bureau of Prisons was "demonstrably incapable of safeguarding and treating" prisoners, who he said were more likely to contract the novel coronavirus because of close living conditions in federal facilities.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, however, touted a series of measures within the BOP to combat the virus' spread, and said that Cohen had made no claim that he was "uniquely at risk," compared to other inmates.

"Nor could he: He is 53 years old and in good health," assistant U.S. attorneys Thomas McKay and Nicolas Roos argued in a three-page letter. "As such, Cohen's claim applies equally to every inmate in the BOP's care (or at least every non-violent inmate)."

According to the filing, the BOP had established an agency task force to coordinate its response to COVID-19, the potentially fatal respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus. On March 13, the BOP moved to suspend social and legal visits for 30 days, and implemented new screening protocols for staff and inmates.

"Cohen offers nothing beyond that bare assertion in support of his claim, which is belied by publicly available information about the BOP's significant efforts to prepare to respond, should there in fact be any cases of COVID-19 at the facility where Cohen is housed," the filing said.

Once an avid defender of the president, Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax evasion, lying to Congress and other campaign finance violations related to hush money payments he made to adult film start Stormy Daniels, who had accused Trump of engaging in an extramarital affair.

He is currently serving his 36-month sentence from the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, a minimum security prison camp about 70 miles north of New York City.

In December, Cohen's attorneys asked Pauley to reduce his prison sentence to just one year and a day in prison because of the "substantial assistance" he had provided for government investigations.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, however, have refuted that assertion, saying Cohen had not been completely forthcoming with information related to government probes.

Cohen had said in a Dec. 11 filing that he had spent approximately 170 hours providing testimony to eight government agencies and countless more hours in preparation. As a result of his conviction, Cohen said, he had been disbarred, "financially crushed" and "personally embarrassed and humiliated."

"For a man married 25 years with two children, being incarcerated is a powerful and humiliating punishment," he said.

 

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