Lawyer Michael Avenatti, famous for bringing a frivolous suit against President Donald Trump that was later thrown out, has been arrested in New York City today. The Democrat operative and possible presidential candidate is facing major charges whose combined sentences could equal life in prison. Avenatti faces charges in two extortion and fraud schemes, the feds announced Monday. Half the charges originate in New York and the other in California. Other charges across the nation are pending.
Avenatti was the golden boy of the Democrat Party the last 18 months for representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her now discounted claims of an affair with President Trump. A judge found the charge frivolous and, in what some saw as ironic justice, awarded the president damages which Avenatti and Daniels must pay.
Today’s arrest of Avenatti is in connection with him being brought up of on charges in Manhattan that he tried to shake down the sneaker giant Nike for $20 million last week, authorities said.
“I’ll go take $10 billion off your client’s market cap … I’m not f–king around,” court papers say he told Nike lawyers during a conference call Wednesday.
That conversation came a day after Avenatti met with Nike’s lawyers and “threatened to release damaging information” if the company didn’t pay off Avenatti and an unidentified co-conspirator, according to a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.
The charges were revealed just minutes after Avenatti — who recently flirted with a Democratic presidential campaign — tweeted that he would be holding a Tuesday morning news conference about “a major high school/college basketball scandal perpetrated by @Nike that we have uncovered.”
“This criminal conduct reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball,” he claimed.
Avenatti’s news conference would have been held on the eve of Nike’s quarterly earnings report and just ahead of the “Sweet 16” round of the NCAA’s annual college basketball tournament, which is set to kick off Thursday.
As for the charges against him in California, prosecutors in the Golden State allege that Avenatti stole a client’s $1.6 million settlement and spent the cash on personal expenses and debts, and to run his law firm and former coffee business, Tully’s Coffee, which had stores in Los Angeles and Seattle.
Avenatti is also accused of defrauding a bank in Mississipi by using fake tax returns to borrow $4.1 million, even though he never filed personal tax returns for 2011, 2012 and 2013 — and still owes the IRS more than $850,000 in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest for 2009 and 2010, the feds said.
Avenatti has made a name for himself, coming from obscurity, by making outrageous claims and finding the most unlikely clients to represent. During the Judge Kavenaugh hearings, the lawyer claimed that the judge had been involved in a gang rape and had witnesses to testify to that fact. The story fell apart after his “clients” could not keep their story straight and then ended up admitting they were “forced” by Avenatti to lie about Kavanaugh.
The charges involving NIKE indicate how he and Daniels may have extorted then businessman Donald Trump. It has long been believed the charges were false, but not wanting to drag the story through the courts, Trump paid up.
As recently as three months ago, Avenatti was considered a serious candidate for the Democrat nomination for president and was a regular on CNN, MSNBC and quoted in the nation’s largest liberal daily newspapers.
