Charged with extortion, embezzlement and other crimes, 48-year-old former attorney Michael Avenatti for infamous Stormy Daniels AKA Stephanie Clifford, was charged by the FBI March 25 with trying to extort $25 million from Nike. FBI agents, tipped off by Nike, recorded the flamboyant lawyer making threats to go public with high profile scandal if Nike didn’t pay his client $1.5 million and hire Avenatti and another attorney for $15 to $25 million. Charged with extortion and embezzlement in Los Angeles and New York, Avenatti faces the real possibility to doing time in federal prison. Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had a one-night stand with President Donald Trump in 2006, fired Avenetti March 12, without showing any knowledge of his impending charges. Talking to the media March 25, the once cocky Avenatti proclaimed his innocence, knowing the charges were serious as a heart attack.
Arrested Nov. 16 on domestic violence charges, the new charges pose a far greater threat to the garrulous Los Angeles attorney claiming July 5, 2018 that he was on the only Democrat capable of beating Trump in 2020. Once charged with domestic abuse, Avenatti abandoned his pipedream of running for president. Avenatti watched his ego inflate like the Goodyear Blimp, paraded on left-wing talk shows for his hatred of Trump. Once a staple on CNN, Avenatti accused Trump of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal. CNN was so obsessed with feeding the impeachment case against Trump, Avenatti fit right in to the anti-Trump agenda. Little did they know or care that Avenatti was con artist with an insatiable appetite for cheap publicity, giving CNN and other anti-Trump networks all the vitriol they could get.
Scrambling to save face after Special Counsel Robert Mueller cleared Trump and his inner circle of Russian collusion and obstruction of justice, CNN has no place for hucksters like Avenatti. Anti-Trump networks are consumed explaining how their open-and-shut case against Trump evaporated into thin air. Avenatti is so radioactive now he’s only a morbid curiosity to whatever networks willing to tell his story. After proclaiming his innocence March 25, Avenatti showed deflated bravado to CBS News. “Sure I’m nervous. I’m scared. I’m all those things. And if I wasn’t, it would make a lot of sense,” Avenatti told CBS News. Admitting he’s “nervous” and “scared,” that’s a far cry from the guy two days ago that proclaimed his innocence. “I am anxious for people to see what really happened,” said Avenatti, thinking he’s trying his case in the court of public opinion—a bad idea for suspects under indictment..
When you consider all the hype surrounding Avenatti when he took on Stormy Daniels, especially the endless exposure in the anti-Trump media, it fed Avenatti’s hypomania, spending 24/7 appearing on every anti-Trump station available. Once hit with domestic abuse charges, the media dropped Avenatti like a hot tamale. “We never attempted to extort Nike & when the evidence in disclosed, the public will learn the thruth about Nike’s crime & cover-up,” Avenatti tweeted March 15. Why Avenatti thinks the public cares about what he thinks is anyone’s guess. Federal officials don’t go by Avenatti’s criteria for extortion and embezzlement. With emails and recorded phone calls, Avenatti won’t be able to weasel out of this one. Admitting that he had a blockbuster scandal in NCAA basketball, Avenatti essentially admitted that he had the means and opportunity to blackmail Nike.
U.S. Attorneys in Los Angeles and New York don’t file charges unless they have enough evidence for conviction or at least a plea deal. Avenatti could face up to 30 years in California and another 20 years in federal prison in New York. Avenatti faces more federal charges for misusing a client’s $1.6 million settlement, not to mention defrauding a Mississippi bank for filing fake tax returns to qualify for real estate loans. When you add everything up, Aevenatti’s fall from grace looks complete, once the darling of the anti-Trump media. Whatever publicity he enjoyed in the past, Avenatti can’t count on conning his way onto radio and TV talk shows looking to slam Trump. His pending legal cases makes him radioactive, especially after Mueller cleared Trump of Russian collusion and obstruction of justice. Before his domestic abuse charges, Avenatti was a reliable anti-Trump media voice.
Avenatti got too big for his britches parading around on the all the popular anti-Trump talk shows. He obviously thought his new found celebrity made him immune to prevailing legal standards. “When lawyers use their licenses as weapons, as a guise to extort payments for themselves, they are no longer acting as attorneys. They are acting as criminals,” said Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. Attorney in New York. Allegations against Avenatti “paint an ugly picture of lawless conduct and greed,” said Nick Hanna, U.S. Attorney from Los Angeles. Avenatti can deny the charges all he wants but he knows he faces an uphill battle proving he wasn’t trying to blackmail or extort Nike for cash. “A corrupt lawyer who instead fights for his own self-interests,” Hanna said, throwing the book at Stormy’s old attorney. When Avenatti says, “I’m scared,” he has every reason to be.
