Avenatti’s Lawyer Will Put Stormy Daniels on Trial in Fraud Case

Formerly high-flying, media-friendly lawyer Michael Avenatti faces a trial on April 21 that he bilked AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels out a book advance payment totaling almost $300,000 in 2018. At the time, Avenatti represented Daniels in multiple lawsuits against Donald Trump. That legal crusade saw Avenatti making near-nightly TV appearances and quickly becoming a national celebrity—even briefly considering a run for president in the 2020 Democratic primary.  The highly public lawsuits also made Daniels the country’s—and likely the world’s—most famous adult performer. As one result of her newfound fame, with Avenatti’s assistance, she secured a lucrative book contract for her memoir, Full Disclosure. (The memoir netted Daniels a 2020 AVN Award for Mainstream Venture of the Year.) But according to the charges against him, Avenatti diverted her $300,000 advance payment for the book into his own bank account, and used it to pay for a variety of personal expenses—including a Ferrari, expensive restaurant meals, and dry cleaning bills. On Tuesday, however, Avenatti’s own lawyer, Thomas Warren, telegraphed his strategy for the trial: attack Daniels. “I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to cross-examine Stormy Daniels in a million years,” Warren said on Tuesday, as quoted by Law.com.  “It isn’t a documents case, really. It’s a case about the credibility of Stormy Daniels.” Avenatti is coming off a conviction on February 14 for extortion against the Nike shoe corporation. He is scheduled to be sentenced in July. On Tuesday, Daniels’ current lawyer, Clark Brewster, took a shot at Avenatti for his recent conviction, suggesting that attacking Daniels is a better defense than making Avenatti's credibility a central issue. Brewster told Law.com, “That didn’t work the last time. I guess that’s off the table, so now he wants to attack her. Good luck with that.” Avenatti, in shackles, appeared with his lawyers in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday before Judge Jesse M. Furman of the Southern District of New York. Furman takes over the case from Deborah Batts, who died earlier in February. But Furman said that nothing in the case had changed and the trial remains on schedule to open on April 21. Warren said that, in fact, Daniels owed Avenatti thiousands in unpaid legal feees. But Brewster said that there is a long record of correspondence between Daniels and Avenatti showing that she owed no money, based on the representation agreement signed between the two. “He can try to obscure and smear and make up testimony as he goes along, but the upshot is that the agreement was very simple,” Brewster told The Associated Press.  Photo by The View YouTube Screen Capture