President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen will be released from federal prison on Thursday because of coronavirus concerns and serve the rest of his three-year sentence at home, a senior law enforcement official confirmed to NBC News.
Cohen, who pleaded guilty to a number of charges including campaign finance fraud, was initially set to be released from federal lockup in Otisville, N.Y., in November 2021. He has served just over a year of his sentence.
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. He was initially slated to return home on May 1, but his release was held up in what his former lawyer Lanny Davis called an "unexplained delay."
His imminent release was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Cohen, 53, was sentenced to three years behind bars for what a federal judge called a “veritable smorgasbord" of criminal conduct, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, lying to Congress about the president’s business dealings with Russia and failing to report millions of dollars in income. He has been disbarred in New York.
