Daniels’ attorney accused of stiffing lawyer on $2M debt

LOS ANGELES – Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn actress Stormy Daniels, broke his promise to make a $2 million payment that was due Monday under the settlement of his firm’s bankruptcy, a new lawsuit alleges.

Avenatti agreed in December to pay $4.85 million to Jason Frank, a former lawyer at Avenatti’s Newport Beach law firm, but missed the first installment of $2 million, according to a suit filed Wednesday in state Superior Court in Los Angeles.

“Avenatti has no valid excuse for failing to perform this obligation,” Frank’s lawsuit says.

A document filed with the complaint reveals that an arbitration panel of three retired judges found in February 2017 that the firm, Eagan Avenatti, “acted with malice, oppression and fraud” by hiding its revenue numbers and failing to give copies of its tax returns to Frank, as the panel had ordered.

The lawsuit casts Avenatti in a harsh light at a time when he has emerged as one of President Donald Trump’s chief antagonists in the media. His cable news stints are so frequent that late-night comedians joke about his overexposure.

Some critics have questioned whether Avenatti’s media strategy serves the interests of Daniels in her litigation against Trump and his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Daniels is seeking to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement that bars the actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, from talking publicly about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006 in Lake Tahoe.