NEW YORK — Michael Avenatti, the pugnacious attorney best known for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against President Donald Trump, was arrested Monday…
NEW YORK — Michael Avenatti, the pugnacious attorney best known for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against President Donald Trump, was arrested Monday on charges that included trying to shake down Nike for as much as $25 million by threatening the company with bad publicity.
Avenatti, who was also accused of embezzling a client’s money to pay his own expenses, was charged with extortion and bank and wire fraud in separate cases in New York and California. He was arrested at a New York law firm where he had gone to meet with Nike executives. It was just minutes after he tweeted that he planned to hold a news conference Tuesday to “disclose a major high school/college basketball scandal perpetrated by @Nike that we have uncovered.”
“When lawyers use their law 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.
California investigators had been building a case against Avenatti for more than a year, but prosecutors in New York said their investigation began only last week and was completed in days.
In the California case, Avenatti allegedly misused a client’s money to pay his debts and those of his coffee business and law firm. Federal prosecutors said he also defrauded a Mississippi bank by using phony tax returns to obtain millions of dollars in loans.
The allegations “paint an ugly picture of lawless conduct and greed,” said Nick Hanna, the U. S. attorney in Los Angeles. Avenatti describes himself on Twitter as an attorney and advocate, but the accusations describe “a corrupt lawyer who instead fights for his own selfish interests.”
Avenatti appeared briefly in court Monday evening in New York and was ordered released on $300,000 bond. He did not enter a plea. Emerging from the courthouse, he thanked the federal agents who arrested him for being courteous and professional.
“As all of you know, for the entirety of my career I have fought against the powerful. Powerful people and powerful corporations. I will never stop fighting that good fight,” he said. “I am highly confident that when all the evidence is laid bare in connection with these cases, when it is all known, when due process occurs, that I will be fully exonerated and justice will be done.
