Michael Avenatti

[fraurosena]

13 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Ok, I have to admit that although I have a personal dislike for Avenatti's obvious famewhoring antics on tv, I do really admire him as an attorney. I love the way he wipes the floor with Cohen and the TT's antics. I have no idea how a judge will look at his argumentation -- I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on tv --  but boy does he make a good case, and bases it literally everywhere on precedent and law, unlike the deposition (I'm not sure of the exact legal term) made by Cohen and the TT's attorney(s).

I can't wait to hear what happens next in this case. Keeping my fingers crossed that discovery will take place and the presidunce deposed. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Lawrence fanboying Avenatti:

 

[fraurosena]

You know I've never liked Avenatti much. Well, now I have even more reason to dislike him.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Michael Avenatti arrested on suspicion of domestic violence"

Spoiler

Michael Avenatti, a Democratic lawyer whose public profile exploded this year when he sued President Trump on behalf of an adult-film star and flirted with a 2020 presidential bid, was arrested Wednesday in Los Angeles on suspicion of domestic violence.

The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed the arrest, which was first reported by TMZ, in a tweet late Wednesday.

“We can confirm that today LAPD Detectives arrested Michael Avenatti on suspicion of domestic violence. This is an ongoing investigation and we will provide more details as they become available,” the department wrote, without providing further details.

Avenatti is known for his aggressive media presence as he represents Stormy Daniels in two lawsuits against Trump. He has vowed to depose the president and said he is considering running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 in order to challenge him politically.

Avenatti did not answer his cellphone or return messages late Wednesday. His law office in Newport Beach, Calif., automatically directed phone calls to an answering service.

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

It was unclear who was involved in the alleged incident. TMZ initially reported that Avenatti was arrested after his “estranged wife” filed a felony domestic violence report, but a lawyer for ex-wife Lisa Storie Avenatti told BuzzFeed News that the article was not true. TMZ later amended its story.

Avenatti’s political celebrity has grown thanks to a continuous cycle of media interviews and an active Twitter presence that he uses to challenge Trump. He launched a political action committee and has spoken at Democratic events around the country.

The Vermont Democratic Party announced late Wednesday that it was canceling events scheduled with Avenatti in light of his reported arrest.

“The Vermont Democratic Party has cancelled Mr. Avenatti’s forthcoming scheduled appearances in Vermont, and will be refunding all ticket sales,” state party spokesman R. Christopher Di Mezzo said in a statement.

Avenatti is representing Daniels in two lawsuits against Trump, with whom she claims to have had an affair. One, claiming Trump defamed her, was recently tossed in federal court; Avenatti is now appealing the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The other seeks to formally invalidate a 2016 nondisclosure agreement that prevented Daniels from discussing her alleged affair with Trump in the lead-up to the election. Trump, who denies having an affair with Daniels, has said he will not enforce the agreement.

Trump lawyer Charles Harder noted that three legal motions in the cases are scheduled for oral arguments in a Los Angeles federal court on Dec. 3.

 

[Howl]

I'm holding out until I hear the details.  His current ex-wife (is there more than one?) has stated that he has never been violent, he did not attack her and police were not called.  So starting to wonder if this was a set up or if another woman was involved.  I have to consider that either scenario is plausible. 

[fraurosena]

6 hours ago, Howl said:

I'm holding out until I hear the details.  His current ex-wife (is there more than one?) has stated that he has never been violent, he did not attack her and police were not called.  So starting to wonder if this was a set up or if another woman was involved.  I have to consider that either scenario is plausible. 

I've been reading that somehow Jacob Wohl is connected to this. Remember Jacob Wohl? The dude who lives with his mom and gave her number for his so-called company, Surefire, and who had the no-show Mueller accuser at that shit-show of a press conference.

Aha, I've found the tweet, and a couple of others showing how right royally pissed Avenatti is about this.

 

[AmazonGrace]

A corporate jet huh. 

[Howl]

A week or two ago, many congratulated Avenatti on his decision to NOT run for president.  In the last few days, I'm seeing quite a few congratulatory tweets, recalling that Avenatti and the Stormy non-disclosure agreement saga brought a major part of the Cohen rodeo/Trump payoffs into the light of day. 

As a refresher, three articles from early May, 2018: 

May 9, 2018    Vanity Fair:  “THERE’S JUST A LOT OF SHADINESS AROUND AVENATTI”: MAGA WORLD IS NOT QUITE COMING TO TERMS WITH STORMY’S LAWYER’S LATEST BOMBSHELL  At this point in the Russia investigation, Trump’s allies in the conservative media are expressing a rather creative interpretation of events.

May 10, 2018  The Hill: Who is paying Michael Avenatti?

May 18, 2018  Politico: Why Trump Should Fear Michael Avenatti More Than Bob Mueller

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Avenatti seems a bit off the rails lately.

 

Stormy weighs in:

 

[RainbowSky]

Wooow.

Dude came out loud and obnoxious. A good way to have people even more happy to turn your ass over.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Michael Avenatti charged with 36 federal crimes, including tax fraud and bank fraud"

Spoiler

Federal prosecutors announced a 36-count indictment Thursday against Michael Avenatti, the high-profile lawyer best known for his public attacks on President Trump, accusing Avenatti of stealing millions of dollars from his clients, and using that money to pay for, among other things, a $5 million jet he co-owned.

Nick Hanna, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, announced the indictment at a news conference Thursday afternoon, expanding on the criminal charges filed against him last month. The Los Angeles case is not related to a separate set of charges Avenatti faces in New York for allegedly trying to extort millions of dollars from the athletic wear company Nike.

“Money generated from one set of crimes was used to further other crimes, typically in the form of payments designed to string along victims,” Hanna told reporters. The purpose of some of the crimes, the prosecutor said, was “to prevent Mr. Avenatti’s financial house of cards from collapsing.”

The charges fall into four categories — wire fraud, tax fraud, bank fraud, and bankruptcy fraud. According to the indictment, one of Avenatti’s victims was a paraplegic client who had won a major legal settlement. Rather than give his client the money, Avenatti allegedly repeatedly lied and said it wasn’t available.

Avenatti, who is set to be arraigned later this month, said he intends to plead not guilty and “fully fight” the charges against him.

Prosecutors said that if Avenatti were convicted of all 36 charges, he would face a maximum 333 years in federal prison.

Following Avenatti’s arrest last month, The Washington Post reported that it marked “the latest and most remarkable chapter in the strange public saga of the California lawyer.”

The Post reported at the time:

Authorities charge that Avenatti threatened to hold a news conference on the eve of the NCAA college basketball tournament to reveal damaging allegations against Nike unless it paid his client $1.5 million and agreed to hire Avenatti and another lawyer for $15 million to $25 million to conduct an “internal investigation” into the purported allegations.

“Nike will not be extorted or hide information that is relevant to a government investigation,” the company said in a statement. “Nike firmly believes in ethical and fair play, both in business and sports, and will continue to assist the prosecutors.”

Devlin Barrett and Elise Viebeck

On the fraud charges, The Post reported Avenatti was accused of “misusing client funds and of lying to a bank about his income to obtain loans totaling $4.1 million for his law firm and coffee business.”

The Post added:

According to court papers, Avenatti negotiated in January a $1.6 million settlement on behalf of an unidentified client, but prosecutors say he gave that client a bogus settlement agreement with a false payment date, concealing what he had done.

As part of a long-running investigation into Avenatti’s alleged financial misdeeds, officials said he did not pay taxes for several years and owed the Internal Revenue Service $850,438, plus interest and penalties.

“There have been collection efforts going on for many, many years,” said Nick Hanna, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. “This investigation was started in the ordinary course; it came up through the IRS with the collection of back taxes.”

Hanna said the Avenatti case “has nothing to do with anything political or with anything else. The facts in this case speak for themselves.”

 

[Howl]

Well, it was a good run while it lasted, Michael.  

I wanted to like him, and did.  Tons of chutzpah, he presented himself as a scrapper, fighter, bull dog for truth, and he did open up the entire Stormy Daniels can o' worms.

Quote

On the fraud charges, The Post reported Avenatti was accused of “misusing client funds and of lying to a bank about his income to obtain loans totaling $4.1 million for his law firm and coffee business.”

According to court papers, Avenatti negotiated in January a $1.6 million settlement on behalf of an unidentified client, but prosecutors say he gave that client a bogus settlement agreement with a false payment date, concealing what he had done.

Now the lying, cheating, stealing? Horrible.  At some point, he may go to prison, he'll lose his license to practice law and it will all be over.  

Sociopath? Mental illness? 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

"A mentally ill man was pushed to the brink of suicide in jail. Then Michael Avenatti stole millions from him, feds say."

Spoiler

Geoffrey Johnson was paralyzed and in dire straits at the time he met Michael Avenatti.

His life had reached a critical juncture: Behind him was a traumatic experience at the Los Angeles County jail, one that would leave him a paraplegic for the rest of his life. Ahead of him was a chance to seek retribution and money, if not his health.

It was the fall of 2013 when they connected, two years after Johnson jumped off a balcony within the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles and landed headfirst on the concrete floor, according to a federal lawsuit.

As Johnson tried to put his life back together, he hired Avenatti. To the attorney and his law firm, Johnson’s case amounted to civil rights abuse. It was clear that the Twin Towers staff had ignored the warning signs that Johnson was suicidal, Johnson’s lawsuit would soon contend. And it was clear the jail failed to take any reasonable steps to prevent the mentally ill man from jumping off the ledge, even after he had done it once before, the suit argued.

It was clear enough, apparently, that the county gave up fighting the case in 2015 and agreed to pay Johnson $4 million, a settlement agreement that Avenatti negotiated.

But four years later, Johnson is more destitute than ever before. He never saw the millions of dollars that were owed to him, federal prosecutors say. For years, Avenatti told him the money was entangled in red tape, inaccessible to him because the county hadn’t approved a special trust fund.

In reality, the feds say, Avenatti had siphoned nearly all of it into his own personal bank accounts — entangling Johnson in a scandal that has thrust the celebrity lawyer into legal turmoil as he stands accused of stealing millions of dollars from his clients.

Now, after years of trauma stemming from Johnson’s life-altering injury in jail, his long-held belief that the money would come soon has evaporated, said his current attorney.

“He feels betrayed,” attorney Joshua M. Robbins told The Washington Post. “I think in this situation one might feel embarrassed about not having realized sooner what was going on, and profoundly disappointed. A few weeks ago, he thought he had a couple million coming his way, which for somebody in his position is immensely important to his future — only to realize it was all a mirage.”

Federal prosecutors unveiled a 36-count indictment against Avenatti on Thursday, alleging he embezzled numerous clients’ settlement funds for his own personal gain and lied to cover it up. The indictment comes weeks after Avenatti was accused in another indictment of trying to extort Nike, allegations that Avenatti denied.

In the new indictment, Avenatti has also insisted on his innocence, saying “any claim that any monies due clients were mishandled is bogus nonsense.”

But the consequences of Avenatti’s alleged misdeeds are serious for Johnson, who now has no source of income, Robbins said. Avenatti had been paying Johnson in piecemeal amounts, $1,000 here and there, so that Johnson could cover rent, Robbins said. Now those payments have stopped.

Making matters worse, Johnson, who describes himself on Facebook as a music minister at a nondenominational, country western-themed church in California, had also been living off Social Security benefits — but those also ended earlier this year after Avenatti failed to provide the requested information to the Social Security Administration, prosecutors say. The agency was waiting for information about the status of Johnson’s multimillion-dollar settlement, according to the indictment.

“The most immediate concern is, how am I going to get by?" Robbins said.

The events that led Johnson into the center of Avenatti’s alleged criminal plot begin early the morning of April 24, 2011, around 6:30 a.m., when Los Angeles police found Johnson in the middle of the street outside his apartment, according to court documents. He was naked and praying to God. Police brought him to the emergency psychiatric unit at a public hospital, but he wouldn’t stay at the hospital for long. After he allegedly “pushed a doctor,” according to court documents, he was arrested and taken to jail.

Upon learning of her brother’s dire situation, Johnson’s sister filled out an inmate medical form that warned jail staff of his recent suicidal thoughts and described the delusions that had been haunting him. He feared he was being chased, and that a group of people were trying to bury him alive, she wrote. He “believed that the only way to escape the plot of others to kill him was to commit suicide,” she wrote, and warned that he “planned to jump off the roof.”

On April 29, 2011, just after jail nurses evaluated him and found him not to be suicidal, he climbed to the top of the stairs on the top tier of his jail pod and, “without warning," threw himself over the ledge. He injured his foot, returned to the hospital and, after a one-night stay, returned to jail.

For a while, he remained in inpatient custody, where doctors expressed unease about his “elevated risk for self harmful behaviors, possibly leading to severe injury or death.” But when he was released back into general population in July 2011 — still awaiting trial for allegedly lunging at a hospital nurse — he was again housed in a cell on the top tier. At least one nurse had recommended he be placed on a lower tier, since he had tried to jump to his death before.

The next month, Johnson tried to jump to his death. On Aug. 30, around 5:10 a.m., a deputy let him out of his cell for breakfast. Johnson walked to the top of the stairs and climbed onto a railing. He straightened his arms like he was about to dive into a swimming pool and lunged head first.

When he woke up, he couldn’t feel anything from the waist down.

Robbins said Johnson had never dealt with civil attorneys in a case like this before. Johnson didn’t know what to expect from Avenatti. He wasn’t yet the bombastic celebrity lawyer yelling on cable television about President Trump on behalf of his now-former client, adult-film star Stormy Daniels. He seemed like a good lawyer to Johnson, Robbins said, especially after helping him win $4 million.

They were alone when Avenatti explained the terms of the settlement to him, terms that the lawyer entirely fabricated, according to the indictment. He told Johnson the settlement was confidential, which was false, prosecutors said. He told Johnson it couldn’t be paid all at once — also allegedly false. And he told Johnson he couldn’t have it until the county approved a “Special Needs Trust" fund for Johnson, so that the settlement money didn’t interfere with his Social Security benefits. Another lie, prosecutors say.

In fact, the county had already paid all of the money out to Johnson. It was just sitting in Avenatti’s hands, prosecutors say.

The $4 million was dispersed among his personal account and accounts associated with Avenatti’s racing team, according to the indictment.

Avenatti paid Johnson a total of $124,000 in 69 payments over four years, the only money Johnson ever received from the settlement. At one point, Robbins said, Johnson grew tired of living in an assisted living facility and wanted to buy his own house. Avenatti told him that was a great idea, and even helped him find a real estate broker, according to the indictment.

But when Johnson asked for the money, Avenatti, again, told him sorry, the county still hadn’t approved it.

“He was told, for four years basically, that that was the delay,” Robbins said. "So he was just waiting for this to be done. In the meantime, Mr. Avenatti was giving him these small amounts of money to tie him over, as though he was giving him money out of his own pocket.”

Finally, out of the blue, prosecutors say Avenatti paid Johnson a visit late last month to inform him that, actually, the county was ready to pay the entire settlement to him. He would just have to sign these documents — one of which included a “client testimonial” praising Avenatti as a loyal and highly capable attorney.

Avenatti made this visit to Johnson directly after a hearing in federal court where he was questioned about Johnson’s settlement, according to the indictment.

“He must have known the cat was out of the bag,” Robbins said. And of course, Robbins said, “obviously if he tells you you’re about to get a few million dollars — can you just sign here and say I’m a great lawyer?" Johnson had no reservations about signing the document.

Avenatti posted the “client testimonial” that Johnson signed on Twitter on Thursday, claiming it was evidence that can attest “to my ethics and how his case was handled.”

Johnson received his last piecemeal payment from Avenatti last month, and is now trying to figure out how to pay next month’s rent, Robbins said. Prosecutors said in the indictment they will seek to recover the money for all of Avenatti’s alleged victims.

 

[Howl]

Time for an update y'all. I unabashedly admit that I was a major Avenatti fan at the beginning.  

In about an hour he will be sentenced to prison for attempting to extort Nike for megamillions of dollars.  

He also financially destroyed elderly clients by stealing part of their legal settlements by misrepresenting (lying about) how much they were awarded and screwed  with Stormy Daniels on a book deal. 

Corrupt to the core. 

This brief article has a good summary: Disgraced Trump foe Michael Avenatti faces sentencing for Nike extortion scheme

This is one of those situations where he could have been very successful in life by just being honest.  Instead, I suspect he'll get a lengthy stay in the gray-bar hotel.  

Edited July 8, 2021 by Howl

[Howl]

Sentence: 30 months visit in the gray-bar hotel.