Michael Avenatti is charged with defrauding Stormy Daniels
Michael Avenatti, the attorney who rocketed to fame through his representation of porn star Stormy Daniels in her battles with President Donald Trump, was charged Wednesday with ripping make it clear that she is the client involved.
Avenatti denied the allegations on Twitter.
“No monies relating to Ms. Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled. She received millions of dollars worth of legal services and we spent huge sums in expenses. She directly paid only $100.00 for all that she received. I look forward to a jury hearing the evidence,” he wrote.
Avenatti added in a later tweet that his agreement for representing Daniels “included a percentage of any book proceeds.”
The charges pile on top of previous allegations of misconduct by Avenatti, who represented Daniels when she sued to be released from a nondisclosure agreement involving an alleged tryst with Trump. The president denies an affair took place.
Avenatti was previously charged in New York with trying to extort up to
Attorney Michael Avenatti used about $300,000 that Stormy Daniels was supposed to get from a book deal for personal and business expenses, federal prosecutors say. Avenatti denied the allegations.
$25 million from Nike by threatening to expose claims that the shoemaker paid off high-school basketball players to steer them to Nike-sponsored colleges. And in Los Angeles, he’s facing a multicount federal indictment alleging that he stole millions of dollars from clients, didn’t pay taxes, committed bank fraud, and lied during bankruptcy proceedings.
Avenatti has denied the allegations against him on both coasts. The Los Angeles charges alone carry a potential penalty of more than 300 years in prison.
“I look forward to a jury hearing all of the evidence and passing judgment on my conduct,” Avenatti wrote in a text message to The Associated Press.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, initially hired Avenatti to handle a lawsuit that she filed last year in which she sought to invalidate the nondisclosure agreement that she had signed with Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, in exchange for $130,000.
The money was supposed to buy her silence during Trump’s run for president about an alleged affair between the two. In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaignfinance laws in connection with the payment.
In announcing the new charges Wednesday, prosecutors said Avenatti sent a “fraudulent and unauthorized letter” to Daniels’ literary agent, instructing the agent to send payments not to Daniels but to a bank account that Avenatti controlled. They said he used the stolen funds to pay employees of his law firm and pay for hotels, airfare, dry cleaning, and his Ferrari.
“Far from zealously representing his client, Avenatti, as alleged, instead engaged in outright deception and theft, victimizing rather than advocating for his client,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a news release.
Avenatti “blatantly lied” and stole to maintain his “extravagant lifestyle,” Berman said.
Daniels raised concerns with Avenatti about late payments around the time her book, “Full Disclosure,” was published in October, according to the indictment.
“When is the publisher going to cough up my money,” she asked Avenatti in early December, according to the indictment.
Avenatti responded that he was “working them and threatening litigation,” prosecutors said, but he did not tell Daniels he had already received the money.
In March, Daniels tweeted that she had fired Avenatti a month earlier after “discovering that he had dealt with me extremely dishonestly.”