Jonathan Chait: “The most abusive aspect of Cohen’s treatment has surely been the Justice Department’s attempt to pressure him into giving up his book. ‘I make the finding that the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory,’ the judge said. ‘And it’s retaliation because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and to discuss anything about the book or anything else he wants on social media and with others.'”
“Suppressing a book that might hurt the president is an unusually blunt tool of censorship. Trump frequently calls various forms of protected First Amendment criticism illegal, but here we see his Justice Department following through on these claims.”