The Daily Beast on the Total Immunity threat:

When the Supreme Court declared presidents immune from prosecution for their official acts Monday, one man immediately feared what it meant: Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-nemesis, Michael Cohen.

We all immediately feared what it meant. The horror of it is all too obvious.

But quibbling aside, he does have a specific point.

Cohen is the only person summarily jailed by Trump, an experience he says awaits many more people if the Republican candidate wins in November.

Cohen admitted in December 2018 that he lied to Congress and paid illegal hush money to Stormy Daniels, and began a three-year sentence in May 2019. A year later he was granted early release from prison under arrangements to reduce the number of federal prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he also happened to have a tell-all book—full of lurid details and one which he had heavily signaled would be damaging to Trump—coming out in September of that year.

It was that July he was presented with new early release conditions, reproduced today by The Daily Beast. At first, the release forms seemed straightforward. But after the formal procedures about Cohen having to subject himself to home monitoring and other conditions federal inmates agree to, there was something fishy.

The first red flag was the absence of a serial number in the top left corner. Then came language that, in effect, made waiving Cohen’s First Amendment rights a condition of his release.

In the Federal Location Monitoring Program Participant Agreement form he was told there could be, “No engagement of any kind with the media, including print, TV, film, books, or any other form of media/news… Prohibition from all social media platforms… No posting on social media and a requirement that you communicate with friends and family to exercise discretion in not posting on your behalf or posting any information about you. The purpose is to avoid glamorizing or bringing publicity to your status as a sentenced inmate serving a custodial term in the community.”

It was in effect a gagging order courtesy of the Department of Justice—and Cohen believes it came direct from Trump.

He believes that the documents offer an insight into how Trump could silence his political opponents by making them sign away their First Amendment rights as a condition of release.

Cohen refused to sign, sued, and spent 15 days in federal custody before a federal judge described the papers as an act of “retaliation,” and freed Cohen.

So, that’s interesting.