The request got here as Cohen is individually anticipated later this week to satisfy — for the ninth time — with investigators from the workplace of Manhattan District Lawyer Cyrus Vance Jr. who’re conducting a wide-ranging prison probe of Trump and the Trump Group, a supply acquainted with the case instructed CNBC.

Cohen’s sentence request is unrelated to his cooperation with Vance’s investigation, which is probably the most severe publicity to prison prosecution that Trump at present faces.

Vance is thought to be investigating how the Trump agency accounted for hush-money funds Cohen facilitated for 2 girls in 2016 and is probing Cohen’s allegations to Congress that the Trump Group artificially manipulated the valuation of actual property belongings to profit financially.

In a letter to U.S. District Choose John Koetl, Cohen wrote that every single day his residence confinement in Manhattan continues “is a day Mr. Cohen is incarcerated unlawfully.”

Cohen wrote that he desires Koetl to “order his launch pending adjudication” of the query of whether or not his prison sentence has already been glad.

He additionally wrote, “The impetus for stated request stems from the well-known proven fact that The Bureau of Prisons conspicuously gradual walks these petitions to moot the willpower; particularly in issues just like the one earlier than Your Honor the place Petitioner can be launched from residence confinement in 7 months.”

If Koetl granted that request, Cohen could be allowed to go away his Higher East Facet residence at will, at the least till the decide in the end guidelines on his authorized bid to have his sentence declared full.

Cohen, who pleaded responsible to tax evasion, illegal marketing campaign contributions and making a false assertion to Congress, was launched into residence confinement final spring after serving barely multiple 12 months of his three-year jail sentence as a result of coronavirus considerations.

In his pending petition to Koetl in Manhattan federal court docket, Cohen argued that his sentence is accomplished due to programs and work assignments he completed in jail, which earned him credit score for time beneath the First Step Act, which Trump signed into regulation. Cohen argues that his newest doable launch date is Might 29.

Cohen instructed CNBC, “This letter to Choose Koetl and my underlying writ of habeas corpus seeks judicial intervention to power the Bureau of Prisons to offer me with what I’m entitled to beneath the phrases of the First Step Act. Nothing extra, nothing much less.”

And, Cohen added, “This petition has nothing to do with my ongoing, steady cooperation with the district legal professional’s workplace, the [New York state] Lawyer Normal’s workplace or another investigation through which I am concerned.”

New York Lawyer Normal Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation of the Trump Group, which, like Vance’s prison probe, is eyeing whether or not the corporate improperly said the worth of the identical property belongings at totally different occasions, benefiting from decrease tax bills and insurance coverage prices when the valuations had been decrease than what had been said for mortgage functions.

Federal prosecutors argued that Cohen will not be eligible to obtain earned time credit for any of the work or programs he recognized “primarily as a result of Cohen doesn’t have a necessity for functions of decreasing his danger of recidivism in any of the areas through which he accomplished programs or work.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York, the entity that’s opposing Cohen’s bid, declined to remark Monday.

In his letter Monday, Cohen additionally dropped at Koetl’s consideration a submitting in one other case involving a federal inmate through which prosecutors seem to have dropped two “misguided and flawed defenses” that they utilized in Cohen’s case.

These defenses are that Cohen’s declare for a ruling from Koetl will not be legally ripe as a result of the First Step Act has not taken full impact and since he has not exhausted administrative appeals to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Cohen started cooperating with Vance’s probe earlier than he went to jail and continued speaking to investigators whereas locked up and after his launch into residence confinement.