Michael Cohen takes his ‘retaliation’ battle with Donald Trump to the Supreme Court

Michael Cohen is asking the Supreme Court to revive his case against Donald Trump, who is accused of violating his former attorney’s constitutional rights by keeping him in solitary confinement after revealing plans for a tell-all memoir.

A challenge that stems from a lawsuit from the one-time “fixer” — who recently testified against Trump during his hush money trial in New York — asks whether a president and federal officials can be held accountable for retaliating against their critics.

“No president should ever be permitted to weaponize the Department of Justice through a willing and complicit attorney general, to have a citizen unconstitutionally remanded to prison, in my case, solitary confinement, because that person refuses to waive that First Amendment constitutional right,” Cohen told The Independent on Wednesday.

“The actions of Donald J Trump and his administration are un-American, and I believe that this case is ripe for the Supreme Court of the United States to hear,” he said.

The case comes on the heels of an earthquaking Supreme Court decision that affirmed a president’s “absolute” immunity from criminal prosecution for “official” acts in office, radically expanding the scope of executive power.

A decision that could embolden Trump in a possible second term “has crossed my mind,” Cohen said, “though I don’t believe that anyone could justify this blatant, unconstitutional act as being one … that could be granted immunity under this presidential immunity ruling.”

A case that interrogates government retaliation provides the Supreme Court an opportunity to decide whether the US is “a democratic republic and not an autocracy led by a monarch, a dictator, a ruler, a supreme leader or a fuhrer,” Cohen said.

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