(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge brutally shot down a request by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, to be let out early from a three-year prison sentence due in part to his fears of contracting the coronavirus.
Cohen's “raising the specter” of the virus in a court filing last week was just “another attempt to inject himself into the news cycle,” U.S. District Judge William Pauley ruled Tuesday in New York.
In a March 17 letter to the judge, Cohen, 53, asked to be allowed to finish his sentence at home due to his fears of contracting Covid-19 at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Otisville, New York. He already requested early release or home confinement in December based on his cooperation with authorities.
Pauley rejected both of Cohen's requests, saying the former lawyer had not shown he was in any danger at the prison camp and that he had exaggerated his role in assisting prosecutors, who also opposed letting him out.
The judge said it was time for Cohen to “accept the consequences of his criminal convictions for serious crimes that had far-reaching institutional harms.”
Once one of the president's closest associates, Cohen pleaded guilty in August 2018 to campaign finance violations related to his arrangement of hush-money payments to women claiming to have had affairs with Trump, including adult-film star Stormy Daniels. After he was charged, Cohen turned on his old boss, calling Trump a racist, a con man and a cheat at a congressional hearing.
Cohen began serving his sentence in May.
The case is U.S. v. Cohen, 18-cr-00602, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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