#Michael Cohen back home in NYC pad after release from prison

Michael Cohen walked into his apartment building on the Upper East Side Friday evening to begin his home confinement term, ending a weeks-long fiasco that saw him arrested and returned to federal prison for refusing terms of his confinement.

Cohen, wearing a suit jacket, baseball hat and surgical mask, walked into his building with his son without stopping to speak to reporters.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered Cohen’s release from Otisville prison, ruling that he was brought into custody by federal authorities on July 9 as “retaliation” for tell-all book that he was planning to write about President Trump.

Cohen was cut loose from the prison at about 1 p.m and driven to his Manhattan apartment by his son, his lawyer, Danya Perry, said.

“Mr. Cohen is extremely gratified that the court upheld his fundamental constitutional right to speak freely and publicly,” Perry said in a statement.

Cohen had been serving three-year prison sentence in Otisville for tax evasion, bank fraud and lying to Congress, but was released on furlough in May because of the coronavirus pandemic.

He was brought back into custody earlier this month at a meeting with US probation officials after he refused to agree to a provision in his home confinement terms, which would have blocked him from publishing a book and speaking to the media.

The meeting was set up about a week after an exclusive Post report that included photos of the former fixer dining out near his apartment in Manhattan.

On Thursday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in a Manhattan federal court hearing that the federal authorities who rearrested Cohen were retaliating against him by blocking him from writing the book or speaking to the media.

“It’s retaliatory because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and discuss the book … on social media,” Hellerstein said.

Hellerstein added that he had never seen a clause in a home confinement agreement that prohibits a defendant from publishing a book in his more than 20 years as a judge.