WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Monday put an end to Michael Cohen’s attempt to sue former President Donald Trump for being abruptly sent back to prison in 2020 as retaliation for writing a tell-all book about him.
The justices rejected Cohen’s appeal of a lower court’s dismissal of his suit.
Cohen said Trump and others tried to silence him by revoking his home release and putting him in solitary confinement.
Cohen, who had served as Trump’s loyal personal attorney and fixer, was serving a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to coordinating payoffs to buy the silence of women who said they had sexual affairs with Trump before he was elected.
Cohen was in the process of transitioning to home confinement in 2020 when he announced he’d finished a book about Trump. Cohen says he refused probation officers’ demand that he not use social media or talk to the news media, so was taken back to prison.
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A federal judge ordered Cohen released back to his family, saying his return to prison had been in retaliation for his criticism of Trump.
But when Cohen also sought damages from Trump, Attorney General William Barr and from prisons officials, another federal judge said Supreme Court precedents prevented the suit.
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling that Cohen had gotten some redress when he was returned to home confinement.
Cohen argued that wasn’t enough to deter “future abuses by future officials against future critics.”
There must be, his lawyers told the Supreme Court, “some remedy when a federal judge finds the government violated an individual’s right to speech by confining him to prison.”
If additional remedies are needed, the Justice Department countered, it should be up to Congress – not the courts – to weigh the costs and benefits of allowing damages.
And Trump’s lawyers gave another reason Cohen’s suit should be rejected. Lawsuits against a president impair their ability to serve, a principle the Supreme Court recently emphasized when ruling in July that Trump has at least presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took as president, Trump’s lawyers said.
“The upshot,” they wrote, “is that, if permitted to proceed forward, petitioner’s claim would effectively destroy the doctrine of Presidential immunity.”
