Avenatti $panked
Owes att’y $4.85M
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was ordered Monday to fork over $4.85 million in back pay to another attorney — as new reports of the Trump nemesis’ lavish lifestyle surfaced.
The Trump-trolling attorney (inset), who has said he’s mulling a 2020 run for the White House, in December had guaranteed the money to Jason Frank, who used to work for Avenatti’s law firm in Newport Beach, Calif., as part of a settlement.
Frank claimed that his contract gave him 25 percent of the firm’s yearly profits, plus 20 percent of his own client fees, and that the company had badly lowballed his take.
Under a settlement struck late last year, Avenatti’s firm was supposed to make its first $2 million installment to Frank in May. When it missed the deadline, Frank sued.
A California superior- court judge just ordered Avenatti to personally pony up the $4.85 million settlement.
A bankruptcy judge had separately already ordered Avenatti’s firm to pay Frank $10 million — in addition to the $4.85 million.
Avenatti told The Associated Press Monday that Frank actually owes him $12 million “for his fraud.’’ He did not elaborate.
The development came as new reports detailed Avenatti’s posh lifestyle of private jets, jaunts to the French Riviera and an obsession with race cars — all while he and companies he has ties with have battled million-dollar tax delinquencies and backrent woes.
His second wife, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, acknowledged in divorce papers in January that she and her estranged husband led “a very extravagant marital lifestyle.”
Avenatti is suing President Trump on behalf of Daniels, who says she had an affair with him in 2006.