SHEDS HIS BRIEFS
Stormy lawter gives up key role to enjoy the p.r.
A judge gave porn star Stormy Daniels’ spotlight-loving lawyer the choice Wednesday between his nonstop “publicity tour” and a formal role in the Michael Cohen case — and he chose to stay in the limelight.
Manhattan federal Judge Kimba Wood told lawyer Michael Avenatti that he won’t be allowed to review evidence seized from President Trump’s personal lawyer unless he adheres “to the standards for professional responsibility in this court.”
“That means that you would have to stop doing some things you have been doing,” Wood said.
“If you participate here, you would not be able to declare your opinion as to Mr. Cohen’s guilt, which you did; you would not be able to give publicity to documents that are not public.”
“That is my only possible role in doing what Mr. Cohen’s lawyers want, which is to essentially stop in its tracks your publicity tour on TV and elsewhere,” she added.
The evidence seized from Cohen includes more than 1 million items that a court-appointed “special master” on Tuesday said weren’t “privileged or highly personal.”
What may be more troubling to Cohen are the shredded documents that are being painstakingly re-assembled by the FBI.
The feds are investigating Cohen over the $130,000 he paid Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to keep silent about her claimed 2006 affair with Trump, who denies the allegation.
But Wood’s smackdown did lit- tle to silence Avenatti, who promptly withdrew his application to take part in the Cohen case and demanded outside court that Cohen release recordings of his conversations with Trump.
“Just like the Nixon tapes years ago, we now have what I will refer to as the Trump tapes,” Avenatti said, referring to the Oval Office recordings that helped force President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation amid the Watergate scandal.
In court, Cohen lawyer Stephen Ryan said the “audiotapes that we have, if any,” were being kept “under lock and key,” and he accused Avenatti of perpetrating a “premeditated drive-by shooting of my client’s rights.”
Avenatti later appeared on CNN and declared that he had no intention of shutting up.
“We’re going to continue to disclose facts and evidence to the American people,” he said.
“We’re not going to stop and we’re not going to change our approach. Period.”
Avenatti also insisted that withdrawing his motion to appear before Wood wouldn’t necessarily prevent him from looking at evidence that FBI agents seized from Cohen.