Michael Cohen completes sentence and is released from federal home confinement

NEW YORK — Michael Cohen is now a free man — and he plans to keep singing like a canary to authorities investigating former President Donald Trump.

The ex-president’s longtime personal lawyer reached the end of his three-year sentence Monday for campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and other crimes. But Cohen said his newfound freedom will not affect his cooperation with authorities — including Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and Attorney General Letitia James — investigating Trump.

“Everyone is asking me, does this mean that you’re not going to continue to work with the DA, the AG and other investigators as they proceed forward? No, it does not mean that.” Cohen told the New York Daily News.

The former bulldog lawyer was bitter that his assistance had not resulted in any credit toward his sentence. He said he’d helped secure the indictment against former Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg for tax evasion.

“Despite providing over 400 hours of testimony that led to 18 different investigations — including (Trump’s) tax returns, including indictments of Weisselberg and others — they basically rode me door to door. Meaning that, you know, not a single second of any day of the sentence was reduced,” Cohen said.

Manhattan federal prosecutors said at Cohen’s sentencing in 2018 that they did not give him credit for cooperating because he was not entirely forthcoming.

Cohen, 55, spent the first year of his sentence in Otisville prison, a medium-security lockup in Orange County, New York, that is a common destination for white-collar crooks. He was released into home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic, which ravaged federal jails across the country.

Cohen will have to report to a probation officer as part of his sentence of three years’ supervised release.

Four months after the FBI raided his office in April 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony charges, copping to bank fraud, tax evasion and using campaign dollars to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both women said they had affairs with Trump.

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