The form in question, a two-page document titled "Federal Location Monitoring Program Participant Agreement," had called for Cohen to abstain from communicating with members of the media — a provision that he had balked at given the pending release of his tell-all book, and one which his legal team has claimed is unusual.
Defense attorneys and legal experts that CNN spoke with Friday said that the form appeared to be tailored to Cohen, the flamboyant former fixer to President Donald Trump, whose affinity for the press is well known. Some called it unfair.
"I've never seen anything like that in my years of practice where a condition was put on a person like that," said Lance Lazzaro, whose client, rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine, drew more than 2 million people to a livestream on Instagram in May -- a record for the app -- weeks after he was released early under a similar arrangement from federal prison into home confinement amid the pandemic.
A spokesman for the Administrative Office of the US Courts, the judiciary agency that oversees the federal probation system, declined to comment on the specifics of Cohen's case, but added that no standard probation forms include language related to media contacts.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons told CNN that Cohen was taken into custody after he "declined to agree to the terms required for the program and home confinement placement."
In May, as coronavirus continued to spread throughout the federal corrections system, Cohen walked out of New York's Otisville prison on furlough status, partway through his three-year sentence on convictions of tax evasion, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations for facilitating hush money payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump, which the President has denied.
By all accounts, Cohen had returned to a mostly quiet life with his family before Thursday, when he arrived just before 11 a.m. to the lower Manhattan courthouse to negotiate the terms of his transition to home confinement with two probation officers.
There, alongside his lawyer, he was presented with the form. While most of the language in the document was unremarkable and standard — don't talk to convicted felons, have your family do the food shopping — the first item was troubling for Cohen and his attorney, Jeffrey Levine. The clause banned Cohen from posting on social media and prohibited him from engaging with the media — specifically listing "books."
"The purpose is to avoid glamorizing or bringing publicity to your status as a sentenced inmate serving a custodial term in the community," reads the document, which was obtained by CNN.
Levine said that defense lawyers made their "objections known to the probation officers" regarding the line but had not refused to sign anything when US Marshals arrived and started to shackle Cohen.
"I'll sign exactly what you want me to sign so that I don't have to go to jail," Cohen told the Marshals, according to another one of his lawyers, Lanny Davis, but the Mar
