Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' one-time attorney, sentenced for$25M Nike extortion plot. Avenatti represented Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a tryst with Donald Trump. He was convicted of fraud related to LA youth basketball and a Nike sponsorship. He faces fraud two more trials this year, and another in 2022, on fraud and other charges.
Exit Full Screen. Avenatti represented Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a tryst with Donald Trump. He was convicted of fraud related to LA youth basketball and a Nike sponsorship. He faces fraud two more trials this year, and another in 2022, on fraud and other charges.
Those political aspirations evaporated when prosecutors in California and New York charged Avenatti with fraud in March 2019. California prosecutors said he was enjoying a $200,000-a-month lifestyle while cheating clients out of millions of dollars and failing to pay hundreds of thousands to the Internal Revenue Service.
The judge wrote that evidence showed that Aven atti "devised an approach to Nike that was designed to enrich himself" rather than address his client's objectives. Nike case: Text messages released in Michael Avenatti case allege conversations about Nike payments.
An employee of Adidas, a Nike competitor, was convicted in that prosecution. The lawyers said Avenatti threatened to do billions of dollars of damage to Nike and then falsely tweeted that criminal conduct at Nike reached the "highest levels.".
Avenatti represented Daniels in 2018 in lawsuits against Trump, appearing often on cable news programs to disparage the Republican president. Avenatti explored running against Trump in 2020, boasting that he would "have no problem raising money.". Daniels said a tryst with Trump a decade earlier resulted in her being paid $130,000 by Trump's ...
Avenatti's former client, Gary Franklin Jr., said in a statement submitted by prosecutors that Avenatti's action had "devastated me financially, professionally, and emotionally.". Franklin was expected in court Thursday.
Daniels' suit over the non-disclosure agreement was dismissed before going to trial or a settlement because the parties were no longer quiet. Trump's lawyers said Daniels didn't win the case and therefore wasn't entitled to lawyer fees, but Judge Robert Broadbelt III disagreed in his ruling Monday, posted online by Daniels' lawyers.
The defamation lawsuit was thrown out and Daniels is appealing the decision and an order to pay Trump almost $300,000 in attorney fees. A judge in that case ruled Trump's statements on Twitter were protected speech under the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes, and was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018. The Associated Press.
The order in Superior Count in Los Angeles determined Daniels won her lawsuit against Trump over the agreement that was signed 11 days before the 2016 presidential election. As a part of that deal, the losing party would pay the lawyers fees.
The president's personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid $130,000 to Daniels, who filed the suit under her legal name Stephanie Clifford. After Trump's election, Daniels sued to void the agreement.
Trump's lawyers also argued Daniels didn't prove the president was a part of the non-disclosure agreement which was made under the name “David Dennison," but Broadbelt wrote there was a large amount of evidence showing Cohen chose Dennison as a pseudo nym for Trump.
Daniels has sued both Trump and Cohen, the former for violating the non-disclosure agreement, alleging it was invalid because he didn’t actually sign it, and the latter for defamation. Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ attorney said Wednesday that the acknowledgement of the payments will strengthen his client’s argument.
That would presumably include his $130,000 to Cohen, who he reimbursed for paying off Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in the weeks before the election to prevent her from discussing her alleged affair with Trump.
Trump has confirmed Cohen was paid through a “retainer,” but has not specified the timeline. But experts say that Trump’s acknowledgement means he not only has to disclose the payments on this year’s financial disclosure form, but explain why he left it off of last year’s, if he knew he had already incurred the debt.