San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Avenatti offers apology before fraud sentencing
NEW YORK — Convicted California lawyer Michael Avenatti is seeking leniency at sentencing for defrauding former client Stormy Daniels of hundreds of thousands of dollars, his lawyers say, citing a letter in which he told Daniels: “I am truly sorry.”
The emailed letter, dated May 13, was included in a submission his lawyers made last week in Manhattan federal court in advance of his June 2 sentencing.
Avenatti, 51, should face no more than three years in prison for his latest conviction, or 4½ years in all, because two convictions have destroyed his life, the lawyers said.
“This sobering reality is as sufficient and powerful a punishment and deterrence as any. Worse, Mr. Avenatti’s extreme rise and fall played out on the most public of platforms, an experience he is unlikely to ever recover from reputationally,” they said.
Last year, Avenatti was sentenced to 2½ years in prison for trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike by threatening to tarnish its reputation with claims that the sportswear giant was immersed in a college basketball recruiting scandal in which cash payouts were used to steer top-tier athletes to the best programs.
Then he was convicted by a jury this year for pocketing up to $300,000 of an $800,000 payout to Daniels for her autobiography, spending some of the money on his firm’s payroll and personal expenses.
Insisting on representing himself just before Daniels was to testify, Avenatti forced
Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels leave the federal courthouse in New York City in 2018. Avenatti is seeking leniency for defrauding Daniels of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
his lawyers to take a back seat as he confronted his former client over advances she received for her book, “Full Disclosure,” published in fall 2018.
He tried to justify taking some book proceeds by citing other legal quests he took on for Daniels as he was litigating lawsuits to negate the effects of a $130,000 payment she said she received in 2016
from Donald Trump’s personal lawyer to remain silent about a tryst a decade earlier that Trump has denied. Shortly after the payment, Trump won the presidency.
Included as an exhibit, Avenatti’s letter said he had reflected over the past several months about his life, their friendship and his legal representation of her.
“It is obvious that I failed
you in many respects and that I disappointed you and let you down in multiple ways,” he wrote. “I wish that we could turn back the clock so that the mistakes I made would never be repeated. I am truly sorry.”
Prosecutors will file their own sentencing recommendations this month.