Editor’s Note: Following the publication of this post, the start date for the trial concerning the $300,000 that Avenatti allegedly stole from Stormy Daniels was set for April 21, 2020. The post has been updated to reflect that new information.
*****
Michael Avenatti, the silver-tongued and brash attorney who represented Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Donald J. Trump, is scheduled to go to trial on November 12th on charges of trying to extort $20 million from Nike, Inc.
The charges stem from Avenatti’s threat to expose what he described as Nike’s improper payments to recruits for various college basketball teams if the company did not hire him to investigate the matter.
According to the indictment, Avenatti threatened “to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met”.
The trial will be held in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York – and will be presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gardephe.
Avenatti 48, is facing up to 47 years in federal prison in conjunction with the Nike-related charges.
After he was arraigned on the charges last June, Avenatti released a statement in which he said: “I look forward to a New York jury hearing all of the relevant evidence relating to Nike. I have complete confidence in the truth and am confident that I will be exonerated at the end of the trial.”
Yeah… good luck with that.
*****
Other Criminal Charges Pending With Respect to Stormy Daniels
Even if Avenatti is somehow able to win next month’s trial – and it’s going to be hard because the feds have him on tape clearly extorting Nike – he is still facing two more sets of criminal charges.
One of those involves charges that he defrauded his former client, Stormy Daniels, by diverting two payments that were supposed to go to her into his own bank account.
The two $148,750 payments were installments on an $800,000 advance she was to receive on a book she is writing.
Always looking to go on the offensive, Avenatti filed a lien against Daniels last week seeking more than $2 million, “for legal services rendered and cost and expenses advances”.
The lien was filed in the federal court in Columbus, OH, six days after Daniels reached a $450,000 settlement with the city over her arrest at a strip club last year. Daniels was arrested on suspicion of inappropriately touching an undercover officer following a performance she gave at the Sirens strip club in July 2018. The charges were dropped within hours by the City Attorney’s Office.
Daniel’s new attorney, Clark Brewster, said that Avenatti did not represent her with respect to the Ohio case and that he never sent her a bill for any related legal services.
On her Twitter account, Stormy reiterated that Avenatti did not represent her in the Ohio case – and went on to say that he collected more than $500,000 from a public fund he established to raise money for her legal case against Donald Trump.
“In the Ohio case I recently settled, Avenatti barked loudly to the media but did not represent me nor did I have an agreement with him in the case,” said Daniels. “When I met Avenatti he persuaded me to retain him on the basis that I pay him $100 and he would collect fees from a public fund he would generate for my cause”.
She said Avenatti drained the account of $500,000 without any true accounting of what the money was used for.
Whether or not Avenatti represented her in the Columbus case – and is entitled to any money from here on that matter – is irrelevant to the charge that he allegedly stole almost $300,000 from her book advance. That is the alleged crime for which he will eventually stand trial.
Of course, by the time this case comes to trial on April 21, 2020, he may be already in prison.
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Avenatti’s Biggest Legal Problems Are in California
Even if he escapes conviction in the Nike case and the Stormy Daniels case – the two New York cases – Avenatti still has major legal hurdles to get over in California.
There he is facing 36 federal felony counts for fraud, perjury, failure to pay taxes, embezzlement and other financial-related crimes.
Not only are the California charges numerous – they are also the most repugnant.
According to the indictment in the case, Avenatti stole millions of dollars from five clients – and then tried to cover up his misdeeds.
One of the alleged victims is Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, a mentally ill paraplegic on disability who won a $4-million settlement in a lawsuit against Los Angeles County.
Johnson won the settlement, there is no doubt about it, but Avenatti did not bother to tell him.
The settlement funds were allegedly wired to Avenatti, as Johnson’s attorney, in January 2015.
But the lawyer hid that fact from Johnson for years – and only doled out a few “advances” to him – as if the case had not been settled and Avenatti was just being a good guy, helping out his client.
Johnson had no idea that the money Avenatti lent him was his own money.
Meantime, Avenatti blew through Johnson’s millions – all the while deceiving him that the case had not been settled yet.
Avenatti knew, of course, that Johnson was a paraplegic and mentally ill – and, therefore, how could he have as much fun with the millions as Avenatti could? Avenatti is a swinging, high-wheeling, cocaine-snorting, sex-loving, high-living celebrity lawyer – who had many more expenses than his client. Avenatti knew his financial needs were much greater than Johnson’s.
So he blew through Johnson’s money.
The California indictment also alleges that in 2017 Avenatti received $2.75 million in proceeds from another client’s legal settlement – but also concealed that settlement from his client. The very next day, Avenatti put $2.5 million of that money into the purchase of a private jet for himself.
Avenatti needed that jet to fly around the country to take care of his clients. But federal agents seized the Honda HA-420 jet at the airport in Santa Barbara, CA shortly after the indictment was unsealed.
Avenatti was also accused of embezzling from another client’s settlement of $1.6 million. Prosecutors claim that after the money was wired to one of his bank accounts, Avenatti denied receiving the money – and then promptly spent it all on personal expenses.
In all these cases and others, the clients did not receive their money – it went to support Avenatti’s lavish lifestyle.
It is important to note that Avenatti was not working for free for his clients. He was entitled to the customary 33 percent that lawyers get for representing clients in lawsuits. Avenatti took a more novel approach – he charged his clients 100 percent of their awards.
His clients got zero.
He is also accused of submitting phony tax returns [that’s right he made them up] and financial statements to Peoples Bank of Mississippi to secure more than $4.1 million in business loans.
If convicted on all counts in the California criminal case, Avenatti could be facing a staggering sentence of 335 years in federal prison.
*****
Avenatti’s Personal Life
Much like the man himself, Avenatti’s personal life is a bit sketchy.
While it is known that he married Lisa Storie Avenatti, the owner of a luxury clothing business, Ikaria Resort Wear – and that they have a 3-year-old daughter – she apparently threw him out of the house back in 2017 because of an alleged affair.
Hopefully, she’s insulated herself so that she will not be held liable with respect to any of his former clients and other victims.
And there will certainly be a lot of people seeking reimbursement for the money he stole from them.
*****
Avenatti Will Likely Die in Prison
Given the sheer breadth of the charges he is facing, it seems likely that Michael Avenatti will die in federal prison.
And given what he did to his clients, that’s just fine with me.
Attorneys who steal from their clients are among the most repugnant of professionals.
Especially when that involves the theft of funds from clients like a mentally-challenged quadriplegic.
*****
The Clare Bronfman Connection
Ironically, one of Avenatti’s last clients was the Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman, the Director of Operations of Nxivm.
She retained Avenatti just days before his arrest to go after the publisher of the Frank Report, Frank Parlato, in a civil lawsuit over California real estate and to try to have the Frank Report – which has been highly critical of her – shut down.
Avenatti was also asked to join her criminal defense team in the Nxivm case where she was charged with racketeering.
Avenatti had a meeting with the prosecution where he proposed that Bronfman enter into a Third Party Cooperation agreement, an arrangement whereby a criminal defendant in one case provides information helpful to the prosecution in another case or evidence of criminality in an unrelated matter, in return for a more lenient plea deal or other considerations.
It is believed that Bronfman was prepared to pay Avenatti millions if he served up information about others’ criminality to the feds.
This was all revealed in a court hearing in April – that Avenatti had met with Deputy US Attorney Mark Lesko in the Eastern District of New York – to make the money-driven deal. In short, Bronfman would pay Avenatti millions and he would serve as an informant to the feds on other cases he was aware of – and Bronfman would supposedly get a better plea deal in the Nxivm case.
Neither Bronfman nor Avenatti bothered to tell the judge that he was representing her.
When a stern judge, Nicholas Garaufis, who had learned about it from the prosecution, asked Bronfman if Avenatti was representing her, Clare Bronfman, rather than answer, fainted dead away – suspending court proceedings.
She was led out to another room and offered an ambulance, which she declined. Court was adjourned to the following day, which gave the heiress sufficient time to think up the right answer – which was that Avenatti was retained mainly to go after Frank Parlato.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
Avenatti should seek a Presidential Pardon
Sad, why don’t lawyers understand that DO NOT STEAL is a law?
Giggity giggity goo..
Perfect ending to a swine!
Very nice to see the justice system work for a change. The prosecutors now need to go after Avenatti’s friend and co- conspirator in the failed extortion of Nike that being his co-hort and fellow criminal, attorney MARK GERAGOS.
Good Stuff thx for posting
I am okay with him dying in prison for being able to weasel his way out of the charges when he beat up his girlfriend.
Amazing… The only non totally scummy act he supposedly commits of which he is innocent (you know as well as I do that women who claim their rich boyfriends beat them are lying) is the one you chose to focus on. How about focusing on the terribly heinous crimes against defenseless people (as opposed to gold-digging “girlfriends”) that he committed; there is plenty of that to go around here…..
Avenatti: “…I didn’t hit her…! – and she hit me first…!…”
I’ll be surprised if Bronfman gets much more than a year.
Hopefully Mark Geragos will be in the adjoining cell to Avenatti as he is just as fast and loose with his law practice. He attempted to extort Nike along with Avenatti as the charged co-conspirator as stated by the federal prosecutors.
Apparently, some people don’t know the background history of the term, “conspiracy theory,” despite its origin as a condemnatory linguistic invention of the CIA, which is simplicity itself to investigate. It is a broad stab offered regularly to anyone bothersome, who asks too many probing questions or who finds inconvenient facts, and the putdown was coined in 1967 to give an assist to the tidy work of the Warren Commission and many other such vested interests who were busily lying about Kennedy’s execution on the streets of Dallas.
All that really means is STFU, Bubba. How silly it is to believe in and to spout this “conspiracy theory” bullshit, which was so efficiently infused with propaganda and psychological manipulation. It is a term designed to discredit and to dismiss research, whether the research is validly-based or not.
But then there are still people bleating that 9/11 was not a highly prepared and successful controlled demolition, used for George, jr to do some marionette tasks and to get Americans riled up enough to murder millions of middle easterners.
It doesn’t work at all anymore as a blanket statement of rigid dismissal, particularly when you are aware of who wants everybody to believe it.
background, for crying out loud. Odds are, it’s time to make some supper over here. gimme mah lentil stew.
And after him was Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite. And the Philistines were gathered together into a troop, where was a piece of ground full of lentiles: and the people fled from the Philistines.
But he stood in the midst of the ground full of lentiles, and defended it, and slew the Philistines: and the Lord wrought a great victory. [2 Samuel 23:11.12. KJV]
Shammah knew his enemy. Does Shivani?
No, as has been discussed before, the term “conspiracy theory” first came into use long ago, but started to become popularized in the mid to late 1940s after the philosopher and academic Karl Popper used it in his book Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), very presciently:
“I do not wish to imply that conspiracies never happen. On the contrary, they are typical social phenomena. They become important, for example, whenever people who believe in the conspiracy theory get into power. And people who sincerely believe that they know how to make heaven on earth are most likely to adopt the conspiracy theory, and to get involved in a counter-conspiracy against non-existing conspirators. For the only explanation of their failure to produce their heaven is the evil intention of the Devil, who has a vested interest in hell. Conspiracies occur, it must be admitted. But the striking fact which, in spite of their occurrence, disproves the conspiracy theory is that few of these conspiracies are ultimately successful. _Conspirators rarely consummate their conspiracy._
Why is this so? Why do achievements differ so widely from aspirations? Because this is usually the case in social life, conspiracy or no conspiracy. Social life is not only a trial of strength between opposing groups: it is action within a more or less resilient or brittle framework of institutions and traditions, and it creates—apart from any conscious counter-action—many unforeseen reactions in this framework, some of them perhaps even unforeseeable. ”
The term’s actual long history can be see in the Google Books Ngram Viewer:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=conspiracy+theory&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cconspiracy%20theory%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cconspiracy%20theory%3B%2Cc0
In one of the earlier examples which contributes to that graph, they were described very fittingly nearly a century ago:
“the conspiracy theory….in whatever form asserted, rests on innuendos, inferences, and ‘common knowledge,’ and the sinister innuendo of a line may require several pages by way of an answer, if any answer is to be attempted, since it requires proving a negative.” *
American and British Claims Arbitration: The Rio Grande Claim (1923)
The fact that the conspiracy theorist claim about the origins of the term itself is so easily falsifiable with just a cursory check, demonstrates the credulous thinking and faulty reasoning inherent in them, and the shoddy nature of what passes for “research” in such circles.
The fundamental problem that Popper (1945) points to, is that grandiose conspiracy theories are either fanciful inventions, or too fantastic to actually consummate – the historical record shows that essentially none have ever been born out, certainly not of the virtually superhuman and preternaturally evil type currently popular to imagine. The more banal sorts of conspiracy and collusion that actually exist, such as in financial fraud and organized crime, are typically exposed when individuals involved reveal secrets for any of a number of human reasons – from ego to remorse, the sort of social factors Popper alludes to – or documents and evidence emerge.
But if you think I’m wrong, cite an example of one of those sorts of conspiracy theories that did ever prove true. In the book American Conspiracy Theories by Uscinski and Parent, they went through over a century of newspaper letters to the editor to identify once-popular conspiracy theories, and not one of them ever really panned out.
* “proving a negative” is a variation of:
Your Fallacy Is: burden of proof
“You said that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove.
The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever. However it is important to note that we can never be certain of anything, and so we must assign value to any claim based on the available evidence, and to dismiss something on the basis that it hasn’t been proven beyond all doubt is also fallacious reasoning.
Example: Bertrand declares that a teapot is, at this very moment, in orbit around the Sun between the Earth and Mars, and that because no one can prove him wrong, his claim is therefore a valid one.”
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof
see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#Proving_a_negative
You must take a word salad laxative there, Junior. Same result as an authentic laxative. Smells the same too.
It’s unfortunate if you have trouble comprehending anything longer than the 2-4 sentence comments you and the other drive-by trolls post.
My exact thought. We must be conspiring.
NothingMaker has a high opinion of his own drivel, but opinions are like…. well, you know.
Giggity.
I could not agree more that lawyers both left and right are almost always the most disgusting destroyers of our ” judicial system” and society.
Those repugnant scums who take an oath are almost always the first to abuse their litigation privilege.
I know quite a bit about being duped by the very lawyers I hired to help me against frauds, cons and individuals who commited not just financial crimes against me but also federal offenses. But, three different lawyers I hired all whored their pathetic selves out to opposing counsel and bribe money from the criminal defendant.
I will never trust a civil litigator again.
A huge % of them are among the worst scoundrels actually employed. The California State Bar for example protects a great number of these scums who should rot in jail for the rest of their lives.
And of course judges are far from a non bias group of black robe wearing honorable white men. A great number of them are bought and sold scums.
Justice does not exist.
Dearest Mr. Lawyers Blow,
Without lawyers…
……There would be no fire escapes, seat belts, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and shattered proof glass on windshields so one does not go blind in minor traffic accident.
Not to mention asbestos insulation and DTD pesticides would still be being used.
On the whole, Lawyers are not so bad.
You know what blows?
Yo Mama!!! 😉
With all due respect, your wife was never involved with any such important litigation.
Your wife is a lowly divorce attorney working for scraps and doing absolutely nothing noble in the world.
Before that, she was a lowly corporate attorney who probably spent her days fetching coffee for the lead attorneys in her firm —- and possibly even blowing them for promotions.
If your wife was ever a bigwig (highly remunerated) corporate attorney —- then she wouldn’t be a lowly divorce attorney now. Common sense.
Please don’t FALSELY turn your wife into a ‘hero’ who gave us seat belts and smoke alarms — when she’s clearly done nothing that resembles any of that.
I bid you a nice day. Give my best to wifey. 🙂
Bangkok,
Gee whiz & Boohoo!
Bangkok are you attempting to insinuate that I married the wrong woman? Maybe I should get a divorce and try and marry up?
….. Lately Bangkok your insults have become flat and limp much like Keith Raniere’s shriveled up dick. Methinks you have been consuming too much of the Baby Batter™ in your diet as of late…. and its beginning to affect your sharp wit and pithy observations.
So Bangkok for the good of the Frank Report, come out from behind the wrong side of the Glory Hole Curtain before its to late!!!!!
And please discard your lobster bib and knee pads. It’s a bad look and uncouth…
Poor little dipshit 😉
Knew you’d take the bait. 🙂
Fetch rover, fetch.
That’s a good lil pup. 🙂
Clearly you’re a lawyer that got your feelings hurt, Poor baby!
K.R. Claviger,
I immensely enjoyed this “Avenatti Story”, piece.
This piece(story) is one of your best.
You are a skilled writer to be able to write such a piece and maintain a level of brevity.
You covered everything with such breadth I have no questions.
Pardon the ass kissing. Take care!
[…] Michael Avenatti Will Likely Die in Prison – Here’s Why […]
I personally know one of his victims, and to say the guy is the biggest shit stain on the earth would be a compliment. The sad thing is, I don’t think any of these people will ever receive their money that he stole, regardless of the outcome. If he isn’t broke, he has hid what is left. He is a gargantuan scumbag, IMO.
Clare & Sara Bronfman’s penchant and ability to keep paying the devil has certainly resulted in the appearance of some world-class evil-doers in this case.
FBI should just standby with handcuffs ready to arrest every demon suiter that shows up on Clare’s doorstep.
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, will pardon this scum. As probably Cuomo will in New York. If Elizabeth Warren wins president seat, she will pardon him on federal crimes. Remember, they are all in the same party as Avenatti.
I didn’t realize being a lawyer meant a political party as well? I’m going to call you Ms Cleo since clearly you can see right into the future and ALL his upcoming pardons!
Newsom may not be around long enough to pardon Avenatti: https://www.google.com/search?q=newsom+recall&oq=newsom+recall&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4688j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Plus, a governor can pardon only state crimes, not federal crimes.
Considering the lying POS was running as a Democrap you don’t realize a lot toots
Bingo! Avenatti is just another one of their kind, America hating liberal snowflakes, and CNN thought he was their hero, pathetic fake news channel with lower ratings than Barney reruns
Yep another corrupt left wing shitstain about to bite the dust. He is going to have some company with some fellow democrap candidates joining him.
He can join Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen. It’s not really a partisan thing, if you hadn’t noticed.
If you are blindly devoted to your group and its leader, and believe the other side, or others, to be little short of evil, you’ve fallen into culty thinking:
Cults of Personality and Where to Find Them
The psychological themes of our devotion to leaders from the 1930s until today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/synapses-sanity-society/201906/cults-personality-and-where-find-them
“people are willing to defend religious, political, or moral ideals at great cost, “when such values are embedded in or fused with group identity, becoming intrinsic to ‘Who I am’ and ‘Who We are,’” as [Scott] Atran writes. Particular ideals are called “sacred values,”
The “MAGA fans” and “Bernie bros” manifest the same patterns of behavior that Atran finds among those committed to sacred values. For one, they elevate their favored leader, both mentally and by voting and making financial contributions to their campaigns. They also denigrate opposing candidates (not to mention the supporters of those candidates). Secondly, their activity becomes more intense when their candidate’s success was threatened—witness the reaction of Sanders supporters to moves the Democratic party made in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Finally, both sets of supporters display a proclivity for ignoring negative stories, and eventually in Trump’s case, his failures to make good on promises…. On a small and interpersonal level, this is the treatment that cult leaders strive for: no questions, no doubts, only unending commitment and respect. Politically, of course, large numbers of energetic and decidedly uncritical followers make life easier.
Importantly, it’s not only the personality who benefits from such a political cult. Their followers find a sense of purpose and belonging; to use Atran’s language, they find answers to the vital questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who are we?’ “
Interesting how you claim to be so neutral, yet the only time you push back is when someone gives a conservative position. I see right through your “neutrality.” LOL
Not interesting at all. Anonyfaker is a lying left wing nut blowhard. The only idiot he fools is the little fella nicegirl. And who hasn’t fooled that one.
Sarcasm and negative connotations often don’t come across very well in print. The meaning of “interesting” that was meant was more along the lines of “typical for you.”
Almost no one here ever expresses positions that are the liberal complement of something like that, so challenging extreme culty partisanship, or providing balance, on this site, tends to mean critiquing comments that lean almost exclusively in one particular direction – even though I always try to make clear that it isn’t really about ideology.
Can you show us an example of someone here referring to others as something like “conservative shitstains” or “conservtards,” or posting things like videos of conspiracy theories about Trump or the Bushes?
So what about my statement “It’s not really a partisan thing” isn’t clear? I constantly try to note that these problems are bi-partisan, or regardless of ideology (except so far as some are typical of extremes of any stripe); I even cited specific examples of both sides, or extremes, in a recent comment.
And I did actually challenge one rather liberal extreme position recently.
Back in grad school when I hung out some with a crowd similar to Raniere’s in Clifton Park, including Illuminati conspiracy theories, there was a tongue-in-cheek quote from a book about such things (from Robert Anton Wilson, I’m pretty sure) that has always stuck in my mind: “Death to all fanatics!”
If you’re truly concerned about people getting into MLMs, it involves the same sort of psychological factors and errors of thinking that get people into cults and other the extremes of other types of groups. I would assume you would want to understand those, correct them in yourself as part of your learning and recover process, and learn to guard against them and warn others about them.
In this case I think you’re only noticing things that don’t fit with with your feelings and loyalties, and thus falling into this:
Your Bias IS: confirmation bias
You favor things that confirm your existing beliefs.
“We are primed to see and agree with ideas that fit our preconceptions, and to ignore and dismiss information that conflicts with them. You could say that this is the mother of all biases, as it affects so much of our thinking through motivated reasoning. To help counteract its influence we ought to presume ourselves wrong until proven right.
Think of your ideas and beliefs as software you’re actively trying to find problems with rather than things to be defended. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard Feynman”
https://yourbias.is/confirmation-bias
https://yourbias.is/confirmation-bias
Yep… anonyfaker continues to show his ignorance disguised poorly in his leftwing nut bias. Sleep on slick.
Scott,
Did you know that the majority of Amway enlistees quit after just the first 6 weeks to 6 months?
You actually stuck to something that you were losing money at for years…….
……..Please excuse me you did not “lose” money…. You gave your money to Amway and Betsy Devos’s family…… 😉
And in return you received $50 dollar boxes of detergent and cases of energy drinks that taste like turpentine.
Scott who are you to judge anything or anyone?
As far as I can see you are dumber than a used condom……. 😉
The majority of Amway “enlistees” never start, so it’s not accurate to say they quit.
Why is it you think it’s proper to try to make fun of someone who is helping others not get scammed? That was a rhetorical question, as I already know that you’re an idiot. LOL
It appears that Mikey’s ambitions have exceeded his grasp.
I nominate Mikey for “Shyster of the Year.”
Well done Clare Cruela Bronfman in hiring this exemplary example of the legal profession.
You found someone even more corrupt than you.
Mikey has been a very, very bad boy