Finally, is this the day of reckoning for Michael Avenatti?

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels and a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, jumped into the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle on the afternoon of Sept. 23. On that day, The New Yorker had published the allegations of a woman named Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that a drunken Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a party at Yale sometime in 1983 or 1984. Almost immediately, Avenatti took to Twitter with an allegation of his own.

Avenatti said he had a client, “a woman with credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge.” He did not reveal her name.

Within minutes, Mike Davis, chief counsel for nominations at the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent an email to Avenatti. “You claim to have information you consider credible regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge,” Davis wrote.

Avenatti’s allegation poured fuel on an already raging partisan fire over the Kavanaugh nomination. First there was the Christine Ford allegation.

Then came the Ramirez accusation, which, coming after Ford, gave Kavanaugh’s opponents the occasion to claim a “pattern” of Kavanaugh’s alleged abuse of women. Then Avenatti’s allegation — gang rape — sent it into another dimension.

Avenatti’s client was identified as Julie Swetnick, who had lived in the Washington area during Kavanaugh’s high school years. Avenatti sent the committee an affidavit in which Swetnick made her claims.

The committee chaired by Republican Charles Grassley immediately began investigating Avenatti’s claim, using staff time and resources it could have devoted to other parts of the Kavanaugh matter.

Not long after, NBC aired an interview with Swetnick in which she backed away from her most incendiary accusations. In addition, Swetnick gave NBC the names of four people she said knew about the gang rapes. The network reported that one of the people did not know a Julie Swetnick, another was dead, and two others did not respond to inquiries.

Avenatti also gave the committee a declaration from an anonymous “witness” who said that in 1981 to 1982, she personally saw Kavanaugh “‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties I attended with Quaaludes and/or grain alcohol. I understood this was being done for the purpose of making girls more likely to engage in sexual acts and less likely to say ‘No.’”

Avenatti would not tell the committee who the “witness” was. But, recently, NBC reported that its journalists talked to the witness, who did not back up the declaration that Avenatti gave the committee on her behalf. “It is incorrect that I saw Brett ‘spike’ the punch,” the woman told NBC. “I didn’t see anyone spike the punch ... I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one.

“I do not like that he (Avenatti) twisted my words,” the woman said.

The entire Avenatti episode left Grassley angry that the publicityseeking lawyer had hijacked the committee’s time and energy at a critical moment, with claims that were obviously untrue. So on Oct. 25, Grassley formally referred Avenatti (and Swetnick) to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation into their conduct.

“It is illegal to knowingly and willfully make materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statements to congressional investigators,” Grassley wrote in the referral. “When charlatans make false claims to the committee — claims that may earn them short-term media exposure and financial gain, but which hinder the committee’s ability to do its job — there should be consequences.”

With Avenatti, there have so far been no consequences, beyond the loss of whatever credibility some cable TV news organizations conferred on him in repeated appearances over the last several months. Now, with the Grassley referral, that could finally change.