I presume you’ve seen the cartoon above before, which is admittedly a cynical view of the legal process, but all too true, nevertheless? I propose that we revise this cartoon to reflect the Michael Avenatti definition of “pro bono.” If there’s an artist in the house reading this, would you mind penning an image of Avenatti, social justice warrior, wearing a halo, and bragging about how Stormy Daniels has only paid him $100.00 for the “millions” in legal advice which he has purportedly given her — while a small army of farmers with shovels and plows, create piles marked “Publicity!” “Payroll!” “Ferrari Payments!” and everything else that Avenatti ripped Daniels off for, to the tune of $300,000 — so far. That’s a cartoon that will sell, I would get right on it, if I were you.
Wednesday, California lawyer and once-seeker of the Democratic party’s nomination for president, Michael Avenatti, was indicted twice in New York, one separate indictment for his alleged extortion of Nike and another for allegedly defrauding his former client, Stormy Daniels.
Avenatti and Daniels severed their professional relationship in February, and the court documents do not mention her by name, although the details of the case make it plain that it’s Daniels that is being spoken of. And Avenatti has admitted that one charge is related to Daniels — while of course he categorically denies all charges, and tweets that he looks forward to his day in court and full exoneration. Is there an echo in this room, or does he remind you of anybody we know? The Hill:
The funds were also allegedly used “to make payments to individuals with whom Avenatti had personal relationships, to make a luxury car payment, and to pay for hotels, airfare, meals, car services, and dry cleaning.”
When the then-client asked Avenatti about when her advance for the book deal was arriving, Avenatti allegedly “repeatedly lied … including by stating that he was working on getting the fees from [their] publisher, when, in truth and in fact, Avenatti had already received the fees and spent them on his own personal and professional expenses.” [..]
Avenatti allegedly told the agent involved in the book deal, without his client’s knowledge, that the agent should send a payment for the book to a bank account under his control.
After the agent told Avenatti that the payment couldn’t be sent to that account, Avenatti sent a letter with a forged signature stating that the payment should be sent to the lawyer’s bank account.
The former client allegedly and repeatedly asked Avenatti about the payment from October 2018 through February 2019, to which the document says he “fraudulently stated … that Publisher-1 was withholding payment.” […]
The client later got in touch with the publisher herself and discovered that the payment had already been sent.
Now, I would have given anything to have been a fly on the wall when THAT conversation between Daniels and Avenatti took place, when she realized how she had been screwed.
Avenatti’s other indictment, the one involving Nike, is also severe. Avenatti allegedly attempted to extort $1.5Mil from Nike by threatening to hold a press conference on the eve of the company’s quarterly earnings report, “to unveil allegations of misconduct by Nike staffers.” The severity I speak of, is that Nike said in a statement that Avenatti threatened to use his “ability to garner publicity” to inflict “reputational damage” on Nike. If true, that means Avenatti was threatening to use his then-credibility to extort money from Nike.
Wow. Larceny, fraud, extortion, forgery (even Trump hasn’t been charged with that one, last I knew, but then he can barely write his own name) — short of calling himself Rocko and dangling somebody off the Hilton’s 20th story balcony, Avenatti’s done it all — if these charges are true.
And one thing I can tell you, having known two Los Angeles lawyers who were disbarred — and for charges that would fit in a gnat’s navel, compared to these — the bright red line for the State Bar of California, is stealing money. Once they prove that, you can kiss the license goodbye. Even petty larceny (one of the lawyers I knew took $150 she wasn’t entitled to) co-mingling of funds, anything to do with money, and it’s over. That’s their definition of moral turpitude, stealing from your clients. Any breach of fiduciary duty is bad, but stealing money is the ultimate no no.
And the two lawyers I knew had to do full restitution of the money taken (and again, it was a cup of water, compared to the ocean of theft being alleged here) to keep themselves out of the House of Many Doors.
It is tragic, to consider where Avenatti started out and where he is now. Avenatti was a gifted young man and did himself proud. He came from a working class background and went to law school, graduating valedictorian from George Washington School of Law in 2000. While there, he worked with noted legal scholar Johnathan Turley on constitutional issues relating to FISA and had other achievements.
In 2003, George Washington University Law School established the Michael J. Avenatti Award for Excellence in Pre-Trial and Trial Advocacy, an annual award given to the member of the graduating Juris Doctor class who demonstrates excellence in pre-trial and trial advocacy. Avenatti also received George Washington University’s prestigious Alumni Recognition Award in 2010.
Now all that’s in the s**ter. I personally used to like the man because of the way that he gave it to Trump with both barrels. Many people felt that way. Avenatti’s rise to celebrity attorney was meteoric — and evidently went to his head, because he threw his hat in the ring for president, apparently thinking that his lavish lifestyle, financed at least in part by not paying taxes and by ripping off landlords, would not get noticed. It did, in what Avenatti characterized as a “hit piece” and the tide of public sentiment turned. Then, presenting his client, Julie Swetnick, at the Kavanaugh hearing, backfired. That was the last straw and Democrats openly turned on him. That should have been Avenatti’s wake up call, to amend his ways, but instead he doubled down, and began defending his methods, and that’s when he was perceived by Democrats as more of a liability than an asset.
THIS is why Democrats did NOT want Michael Avenatti to get involved in this fight. Collins is specifically citing Swetnick's "gang rape" accusation as something that made her think she needed to give Kavanaugh the benefit of the doubt.
— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) October 5, 2018
So, what does Avenatti say now? When it’s way way too late to recover lost ground? Politico:
“I have said many, many times over the last year, this is either going to end really, really well, or really, really badly. I am most fearful of the fact that the rate of descent is greater than the rate of ascent,” Avenatti told Vanity Fair. “Some would argue at this point that I flew too close to the sun. As I sit here today, yes, absolutely, I know I did. No question. Icarus.”
“I couldn’t believe how unbelievably great everything was,” Avenatti told Vanity Fair. “Now, there are days when I can’t believe what a nightmare this is.”
Mea culpas always play well. Everybody loves a repentant sinner. But Avenatti did a lot more than just fly a little too close to the sun. It pains me to say it, but it’s obvious: one of the chief characteristics of a narcissistic personality is to do something wrong just to see if you can get away with it, and he tried to get away with a hell of a lot. Avenatti displays a pattern of dishonesty and exploitation of his clients, going way back — he even withheld settlement money from a paraplegic man. How low is that? Avenatti didn’t get here overnight. Vanity Fair:
…federal prosecutors in Los Angeles filed a 197-page complaint accusing him of wire and bank fraud, in which the office detailed allegations of Avenatti misappropriating client settlement money for personal use (the receipts were gaudy: $216,720 to a Neiman Marcus, six figures to a Porsche dealership, and $68,500 at a luxury watch store). The complaint also claimed that Avenatti defrauded a bank by submitting false tax returns in order to obtain millions of dollars in loans. A few weeks later, on April 11, federal officials in California handed down a 36-count indictment, including 19 tax-related charges, 10 counts of wire fraud, 4 counts of bankruptcy fraud, and 2 bank-fraud charges. Avenatti had “[taken] money from one scheme and [used] it to lull clients, to string them along, to prevent them from going to authorities and [took] money from different pots as needed.” One such client was a paraplegic man who had reached a $4 million agreement to settle a case related to his injuries but had not received the money. Avenatti allegedly deposited some of the settlement into a personal account associated with his car-racing team.
You don’t take money from a crippled man and use it for your race car toys. This level of narcissism and moral turpitude rises, not just to the criminal, but to the unconscionable and sociopathic — just like Trump. And Avenatti had an eye on the White House and the public coffers — just like Trump.
Let all this serve as a warning to those who would back a populist outsider for the highest office in the land. At the very least, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. Vote for somebody with a track record in public service, not for some charismatic grifter looking for a new score.
The tragic part of this is that Avenatti “could have been a contender” like Terry Malloy in “On The Waterfront.” If he’d taken a different path, or just stayed on the path he was on in law school, working with Johnathan Turley, he could have gone into politics, and perhaps legitimately run for president one day. He had the brains, drive, work ethic, moxie, and certainly no lack of personal charm or charisma. What he lacks is character. In the end, narcissism and greed won out. Michael Avenatti is a classic protagonist from Greek tragedy, his character defects, in the end, have proven his undoing.
Avenatti’s best shot now is to write a compelling memoir. God knows he’ll have the time. Whether anybody wants to read it, or if the group mind of the public will just conclude that Avenatti’s a sleaze like Trump, and simply forget about him, remains to be seen. Personally, I hate waste and it chagrins me to see a squandering of potential like this, when the man could have done great things, if he wasn’t such a materialist, seeking money and the limelight above all else. Like Trump, money and fame are it. Although in fairness to Avenatti, he was motivated to achieve at some point — perhaps as a means to the end of money and fame? We’ll never know. And maybe that’s the real story here, that characters like Trump and Avenatti are more a reflection on how debased the values of our culture have become. Maybe the problem is more a culture that exalts the material and the shallow over substance, that is the problem, rather than the men themselves. That philosophical quandary notwithstanding, all I know is this: I don’t want to see another one of these guys within a stone’s throw of a major party ticket, let alone at the top of it.
I never in a million years wanted him for president. I did mightily enjoy his running circles around Trump. Poor Stormy, screwed by two narcissists, or sociopaths. Whatever they are.
He totally played his hand wrong, but then most of these types do. Instead of running for president, he should have stayed on the good side of the Democrats and been a pundit. That would have given him the limelight he wanted, exposed him to the big legal cases, etc. As pundit and Trump troll, he would have done exceedingly well. He was doing exceedingly well, when that was his role.
He got in over his head with Swetnick and then the presidential thing totally let the cat out of the bag.
I was alright with him running for president, as part of a trolling effort. And at that point, I didn’t know about his down side. I knew he had a hassle with his coffee shop and something about taxes not being withheld — it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t devastating. When news broke of him living like a freaking Bond movie villain, owing the IRS millions, stiffing landlords, OMG. That’s the point that most of us did a 180 on him.
But I loved the way he used to stick it to Trump and I was all for him running for president. I’m all for Biden running for president as well, because whether he gets the nomination or not, he will blast Trump in the process and say things that people need to hear. There are a lot of good reasons for somebody to run for president, not just with an eye to winning the nomination, but because an expanded field leads to greater diversity of opinion.
If Avenatti hadn’t blown it when he did, he might be making some good anti-Trump speeches right now. But he did blow it. Now that more is coming out about who he really is and what he has really done, it’s incredible to me that he thought he could ever pull the wool over people’s eyes. But then again, he saw Trump do it, and he’s a lot smarter than Trump, so I guess he figured he could do it, too.
Moral of the story, Ursula: the greedy are always shortsighted. And narcissists like that are the walking embodiment of greed.
The greed and the lack of looking at the big picture is what’s surprising, here. Avenatti had it freaking made, if he’d just played his cards a little better. But then again, he obviously started cheating people early on. Like Trump, because he got away with it at a basic level, he figured he’d just escalate it.
What blows my mind, though, is he is a smart lawyer. Why didn’t he put it together that if he took this new plunge, to Celebrity Attorney and pundit, that he was going to come under greater scrutiny than John Doe, the ambulance chaser down the street? See, that’s what I can’t parse at all. He’s shown himself to be incredibly bright on the one hand, and abysmally stupid on the other.
Poor Stormy can’t turn around without some scumbag trying to screw her.
She was devastated. Hit the link to The Hill article. Her current lawyer said she was devastated when she realized what he had done. Avenatti is a total con man, apparently, lying through his teeth.
I’ve been saying for some time that a lot of movies will be made of the Trump era. I guarantee you a movie will be made on Avenatti alone. He’s a total crook, playing Mr. Pro Bono with one hand, robbing her blind with the other.
It goes to show you, in a television age, you have to know what the person does when not on television. Anybody can present one face to the public. We have to know who the real person is, when not in public. We can’t be naive, or we’re going to get screwed. Trump proved that.
And Avenatti covered his tracks well. I went to his website back in the day and it’s all about winning, being a star, being a champ. People were in awe of this guy. Now, we know the truth.
Ursula…..I don’t know if you can see it, but there is an ad in the middle of the comments for your article stating that Roger Stone….yes, THAT Roger Stone, will be appearing at The Paper Moon Gentleman’s Club (strip joint) along with “Manhattan Madame” Kristin Davis on May 4th at 8pm…..admission $25, which includes a picture and an autograph. Here is a link to the story…..
https://www.thedailybeast.com/broke-roger-stone-is-speaking-for-money-at-a-strip-club
My how the mighty have fallen. 🙂
My God. I remember reading years ago, “Politics is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” No, show business is the last refuge of the political scoundrel, is how that cliche should be amended. So, Roger Stone is doing stand up comedy, now? Or stand up something.
Hey, maybe this is what Trump will end up doing! Think about it, when it’s all said and done, he can go into a nightclub, and sit down with the mic, and maybe a pianist can play a little ditty and Trump can rhapsodize about the old days with Sleepy Joe and Pencil neck Schiff, God knows what all.
I was surprised that I hadn’t heard anything about Stone’s strip club prophesying…..
To me, Trump would make the perfect, loud-mouthed clown in the dunking booth at a county fair…..either that, or put in a cage at the DC Zoo for people to point and laugh at.
They can’t take our dreams…….
I think this is the second time I’ve heard of Stone doing a publicity event at a “gentlemen’s club”, the first being (IIRC) in Florida, a few weeks back.
Lady Liberty, as I call her, certainly deserved better. Makes me think about the people who work in her business, often exploited and provided no real protection nearly anyone else could count. After all, that reasoning goes, don’t they DESERVE to be mistreated? The correct answer is no but too damn many want to say it’s “yes”.
Here’s to Ms. Daniels’ current lawyer ACTUALLY looking out for her interests.
The good thing about Stormy Daniels is that she always lands on her feet. This hassle with Avenatti will just be another anecdote for her someday. She lands on her feet because she’s playing a straight game, the other people aren’t. (Although, just because I said that, it will probably be revealed that she’s got dead bodies in her backyard, or something.) This is the risk we take when we give a pronouncement on somebody we only know from their publicity.
Avenatti was stupid to back stab Stormy Daniels. But I guess he thinks he can get away with it. Even now, with all these indictments and disasters around him, he’s saying he’s going to be fully exonerated, bla bla. Well, fine, let’s see him pull it off.
I’m distantly related to Huey and Earl Long, both governors of Louisiana, colorful characters and downright shameless political opportunists. Avenatti always struck me as having more than a bit of both their best and worst tendencies. It grieves me that time proved me right on the latter.
Avenatti, I cheered for. At a time when all hope seemed lost, he gave us some. But running for President was a big flashing neon sign that something was amiss. When the rest came out, I was disappointed but not really surprised. And yeah, stealing money from clients should DEFINITELY be a red line.
With respect to stealing money from the clients, it always goes down exactly the same way: the lawyer thinks s/he’s BORROWING it, and the plan is to get it back in place before anybody notices. At least, this is what both of the disbarred lawyers I know told me, and according to everybody I ever discussed the matter with, that’s how they all think.
Probably Avenatti thought that way, too. He’ll just borrow from the money that should be going for the rent, whatever — and then he realized at some point he was never going to be able to get the score even.
I used to do bookkeeping in a few of my jobs. You realize at that point that it’s possible to embezzle. You also realize, if you have two brain cells working, that with a ruined reputation, (not to say possible criminal action) life will be a lot more difficult to live. That’s the difference between people who never fall into that trap and people who do. The ones who do somehow think they’re going to get away with it.
One of the disbarred lawyers I knew was telling the court she was going through an acrimonious divorce — and of course she was. Neither she nor her husband wanted to work at a regular job. She was in sole practice and going broke. She should have gotten a job. Hubby wanted only a great executive job. He had some degree in economics, I forget what. The real truth of the matter is that they were both alcoholics and her disbarment and their divorce was a very rude awakening. I don’t know what happened after that. She owed me money, which I didn’t bother to ever collect. It just goes that with with these people. And Avenatti is sadly in that boat, even with his fine start in law school and all of it.
Avenatti was so much smarter than Trump, he could have played it straight, and been set. But no, he got greedy. Like you said, just another grandiose narcissist, who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. Of course, in retrospect, when he was trolling trump, he was describing himself. It takes one to know one. Remember how we used to say that he was a master of getting into trumps psyche? Wowee, how the tables have turned.
No wonder he was such a powerful adversary, he knows how Trump thinks. This isn’t the first time something like this has been proven. 7-11 Stores hired a thief as a consultant, back in the 70’s, to explain to them how to make their stores safer. It was a big news story at the time. The guy explained how a thief thought, and what he looked for, how visibility was an important factor, all kinds of stuff. This bit with Avenatti reminds me of that. Avenatti was our “Trump consultant” because he knows how the creep thinks.
Seriously, though, it blows my mind how Avenatti has fallen. If somebody like Johnathan Turley is taking you seriously in law school, that’s a wonderful thing. Avenatti could have had a distinguished career in law, maybe started teaching law himself later on. Now he’s disgraced. I think he’s only 50, early fifties. Not that what he’s done would be better at any age, but if he was in his late sixties, he could slink out into retirement and say the hell with it. This really is sad. And he did it to himself, and over a long period of time.
Yeah, this is the part I don’t get. He could have been incredibly successful being on the up and up. He probably just got off on fooling people, and winning. The danger was probably intoxicating for him, too. Just a total trip for me. Like serial killers that have families, and are your next door neighbor, it is fucking creepy how good at acting some of these people are. Gives me the willies.
I was reading the court papers of when “other” individuals were taking a hit from Avenatti, apparently the last, “good”, court action, of his, it was revealing to see how much action can take place without the court revealing the actual names of individuals … of course, the Dotard in the WH IS so overboard with panic now, just showing his actions in a complaint, points to him, with every, “individual 1”, I see, I automatically assign it to the trashmouth himself … his continuous hiding from responsibility, hanging the blame on any other person, (no one is safe from his rabid blame system), he’s so bad now, his actions are so bizarre, that assigning them to him directly is that last nail in his hen house … he’s one of the biggest chicken birds out there …
Like others I enjoyed the hell out of the way he trolled Trump. I even developed an appreciation for his pundit appearances when he’d get asked about other potential clients like Daniels and while he’d tease that he also kept pointing out that their stories had to be carefully vetted. I at least think he did that with Daniels (since her claims held up in court it would seem so) and with others – no doubt there were some looking for a quick payday coming out of the woodwork & contacting him.
Given his career it’s clear he was a driven, talented lawyer for a long time. Alas, he clearly also possessed narcissistic traits which at some point became malignant. It’s also clear that happened before he burst on the scene as Daniel’s attorney. The time will come (during his trials) when we learn just when he went off the rails but the important thing is it happened – he got so full of himself he thought he was smart enough to game the system and get away with it. Ironically, the household fame he got by representing Daniels is likely what did him in because he invited a LOT of scrutiny on himself even before he decided maybe he should be President. Getting away with the shady shit he’d gotten into doing requires actual shade and he instead chose to walk out and demand to be continually in the spotlight. That’s one giant goddamned “oops” on his part and one which he will deservedly pay for dearly.
As for Daniels, she’s tough and savvy. She grew to trust him to some degree but given her line of work she long ago learned to not trust completely. I think seeing Avenatti get taken to task in court a couple of times was enough for her to start checking on him behind his back and probably directly asking him (more than once) about his starting to lose in his advocacy on her case & questioning whether he was spending too much time on TV and not enough lawyering. I too would love to have been a fly on the wall after she decided to check with the publisher about her book advance only to learn that like her earlier lawyer Avenatti had not only lied to her but stolen from her. The thing is, had he made a case to her that his TV appearances were helping move her case along (and I think to a large degree that helped – it sure put Team Trump on the defensive) and that instead of continuing pro bono he’d like a percentage of her book earnings she might have agreed to it & he would have had to steal from her in the first place. Oh well.
It’s sad to see someone with his abilities piss it all away as he’s done.
when calls for his impending presidency (based on…what experience??) rang out, I recall saying he seemed a bit like an opportunistic sleazy lawyer and I was a bit lambasted, and lectured about how I’m just too young and naive to understand the important roll that trial lawyers play in our system.
I do not get what is in the water that is making people follow such obvious grifters and losers in this period in our history.
I agree, there is no obvious tipping point, other than the first rants from the rancid mouth of no reason, and then the push from the Putin people … social media said how great he was and WOULD make things better, (all lies of course), but the continued blathering from that lie-prone Dotard convinced the weaker mental people to, [give him a chance, well because he is such a super business person … the BIGGEST lie of all] they jumped on the wagon, the one with all the dazzling toots and whistles, because he was allowed to lie SO much without proof, but because he was saying it, it must be right.