New York: With a menu that includes matzo ball soup and gefilte fish, as well as a full-time rabbi and a chance at the occasional visit home, the US prison where Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer will spend the next three years is unique in the federal system.
Michael Cohen is due to report to the Federal Correctional Institute in Otisville, New York, about 70 miles (110 km) northwest of New York City, on Monday.The 52-year-old Cohen will be housed in dorm-like accommodations at the facility’s minimum-security camp, which prison consultants say has become a destination for Jewish inmates due to its proximity to New York City’s Jewish and upstate New York’s Orthodox Jewish enclaves.”He’s going to what I like to refer to as ‘Jewish heaven,'” said Larry Levine, founder of Wall Street Prison Consultants, who served a 10-year prison sentence that ended in 2007 for racketeering and other crimes.
Cohen, who once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, was sentenced in December for orchestrating payments to pornographic film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal shortly before the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Cohen said Trump directed the payments.
Trump, who has denied the affairs, said he never directed Cohen to do anything illegal.Cohen received a three-year prison term for the payments and unrelated financial crimes.At Cohen’s sentencing hearing, his lawyer at the time, Guy Petrillo, asked that Cohen be sent to Otisville but did not give a reason for the request. Petrillo could not be reached for comment on the choice of prison.Jack Donson, a former manager at the prison who now runs a prison consulting firm, said the camp was “a great place for white-collar Jewish guys.”Unlike most federal prisons, which periodically bring in part-time “contract rabbis,” Otisville has a full-time rabbi, Levine said.The federal Bureau of Prisons said in an email that only four of the more than 100 prisons run by the agency have full-time rabbis.Another thing that sets Otisville apart is the food.”The availability for kosher food is much greater,” said Michael Frantz, another former inmate, who founded Jail Time Consulting.The commissary menu on Otisville’s website advertises matzo ball soup, gefilte fish and rugelach, a pastry, alongside Doritos tortilla chips and Diet Sprite soda.
