‘Chilling’ in Chapo’s cell
Avenatti held for extortion trial
Porn star Stormy Daniels’ loudmouth ex-lawyer Michael Avenatti is safe and sound in a wing of lower Manhattan’s federal lockup, its warden wrote Tuesday in response to complaints he was being held in a frigid cell previously occupied by drug lord El Chapo
“Due to Mr. Avenatti’s high profile case, his notoriety, Mr. Avenatti’s placement is for his own safety,” Metropolitan Correctional Center warden M. Licon-Vitale wrote in a letter to Avenatti’s lawyers.
On the upside, Avenatti will have easier access to legal documents as he prepares for trial on criminal charges that he tried to extort more than $20 million from Nike in an effort to buy the company’s silence over what Avenatti says were Nike’s secret payments to basketball prospects. The trial could start before the end of this month.
The warden said she’d spoken directly to Avenatti and that “moving forward” he may keep legal materials in his cell. He’ll also have easier access to his attorneys and a computer. The letter from Licon-Vitale came less than 24 hours after Avenatti’s attorneys wrote that the conditions of his confinement had made them unable to get ready for trial.
“He is in a cell reportedly once occupied by El Chapo, on a floor that houses individuals charged with terrorism offenses,” Avenatti’s lawyer Scott Srebnick wrote. Avenatti is under 24hour lockdown in the Special Housing Unit and had a guard posted outside his cell and two cameras focused on him around the clock, according to the letter.
“The temperature in his cell feels like it is in the mid-40s. He is forced to sleep with three blankets,” Srebnick wrote. “Not surprisingly, he has been having great difficulty functioning. He is not permitted to shave.”
Besides the Nike case, Avenatti was arrested and denied bail in California on Jan. 14 on separate charges he hid and laundered money to pay for his lavish lifestyle. He was transported to New York lockup on Jan. 17 for the Nike trial. Avenatti is also charged in a third case with swindling Daniels out of $300,000 from a book deal. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
MCC is the same jail where Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
The Daily News exclusively reported on Jan. 12 that Licon-Vitale had taken over the troubled jail where inmates had complained of heating problems.
Avenatti has signaled that at his Nike trial he will introduce evidence for his claim that the company secretly paid college basketball prospects. Celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos — Avenatti’s co-counsel in the troubled negotiations with Nike — has distanced himself from the bulldog barrister.
Avenatti has claimed Geragos was comfortable with his strategy in the Nike talks. “Without detailing all the facts that undermine that claim, suffice it to say, it is false,” Geragos attorney Brendan McGuire wrote.