It wasn’t so long ago Michael Avenatti was regularly getting booked on cable news and was considering a run for president. But, proving the old adage once again, sometimes the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
In February 2020, Avenatti was convicted on charges related to his scheme to extort $25 million from Nike. Avenatti claimed he had information about payments to families of high school athletes and began demanding money from Nike to essentially make him go away. Instead, Nike execs began recording Avenatti and those recordings made the case for prosecutors.
Last week Avenatti’s attorneys argued for a lenient six month sentence with a year of home confinement afterward, saying his public humiliation has been punishment enough, but prosecutors want him to spend far more time in prison:
“The defendant, a prominent attorney and media personality with a large public following, betrayed his client and sought to enrich himself by weaponizing his public profile in an attempt to extort a publicly-traded company out of tens of millions of dollars. This was an egregious abuse of trust, and it warrants real and serious punishment,” prosecutors wrote.
And that’s not all for Avenatti. He is also accused of keeping $300,000 from a publisher that was intended for Stormy Daniels. That case goes to trial in 2022.