New development! Michael Cohen ordered released from prison.

A judge ordered the release from prison of President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer on Thursday, saying he believes the government retaliated against him for planning to release a book about Trump before November’s election.

Michael Cohen’s First Amendment rights were violated when he was ordered back to prison on July 9 after probation authorities said he refused to sign a form banning him from publishing the book or communicating publicly in other manners, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said during a telephone conference.

The judge ordered him released by tomorrow afternoon.

“How can I take any other inference than that it’s retaliatory?” Hellerstein asked prosecutors, who insisted in court papers and again Thursday that Probation Department officers did not know about the book when they wrote a provision of home confinement that severely restricted Cohen’s public communications.

“I’ve never seen such a clause in 21 years of being a judge and sentencing people and looking at terms of supervised release,” the judge said. “Why would the Bureau of Prisons ask for something like this … unless there was a retaliatory purpose?”

Oh so it’s not routine. I vaguely assumed it was, or might be.

His attorney, Danya Perry, said in a statement that the order was “a victory for the First Amendment” and showed that the government cannot block a book critical of the president as a condition of release to home confinement.

Also a victory for the whole idea that we need all the information about Trump’s crimes, because of the position he holds, which gives him the power to drag the country into a sewer of corruption and mass death.