Ex-Trump lawyer ends prison term

NEW YORK — Michael Cohen, who was former President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer until his 2018 arrest, said Monday that his three-year prison sentence

mostly spent in home confinement — was over as he — took another swipe at his former boss and vowed to continue cooperating with law enforcement probes.

A smiling Cohen emerged from Manhattan federal court after signing documents and speaking with authorities about his upcoming threeyear term of supervised release.

“I feel great today. It’s been long overdue,” Cohen said to a collection of camera crews alerted to his presence by a tweet he had sent Sunday.

Cohen was sentenced to prison in December 2018 after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes. In all, he spent about 13½ months behind prison walls and a year and a half in home confinement.

The campaign finance charges came after he helped arrange payouts during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from making public claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

He implicated Trump at the time in the campaign finance charges, as he did again on Monday when he said that his release from home confinement “in no way negates the actions I took at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump.”

“I will continue to provide information, testimony, documents and my full cooperation on all ongoing investigations to ensure that others are held responsible for their dirty deeds and that no one is ever believed to be above the law,” Cohen said.