NEW YORK _ Michael Cohen, the disgraced former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, was thrown back into prison Thursday for violating the terms of his release into home confinement, according to his attorney and federal authorities.
Television cameras caught Cohen entering federal court in Manhattan for an unspecified afternoon visit.
But he never came back out, and one of his lawyers, Jeffrey Levine, told reporters at the courthouse that Cohen had been remanded into custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn over violating his coronavirus-related release from an upstate New York prison.
Levine did not specify how his client had violated his release.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons only said Cohen had "refused the conditions of his home confinement."
The arrest comes days after the former Trump fixer was spotted dining out near his Midtown apartment.
Cohen, 53, was released from the federal prison in Otisville on May 21 as part of an effort by the Justice Department to thin out inmate populations amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The release was contingent on Cohen serving out the remainder of his three-year sentence in home confinement.
Roger Adler, another attorney for Cohen, said over the weekend that the restaurant visit didn't violate his release.
"It sounds like gotcha tabloid journalism at its worst," Adler told the New York Daily News last Friday. "Must be a slow pre-holiday news day to cover a dinner like this."
Cohen is serving hard time over his 2018 conviction on a laundry list of financial crimes, including orchestrating hush payments to two women in 2016 after they threatened to go public with allegations that they had extramarital affairs with Trump. The payments violated campaign finance law.
Trump used to count Cohen as one of his most loyal associates.
Cohen used to boast that he'd be willing to take "a bullet" for the president and was infamous for hounding down reporters covering him critically.
But all that changed after Cohen was arrested and charge with a range of financial crimes.
He finalized his split with Trump in blistering testimony before the House Oversight Committee in February 2019.
"I'm ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is," Cohen told lawmakers. "He is a racist, he is a con man and he is a cheat."
