Formerly high-flying lawyer Michael Avenatti, who skyrocketed to instant national fame last year as the lawyer for AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Donald Trump and his “fixer” Michael Cohen, will have to remain in New York City to face federal charges that he ripped off Daniels to the tune of $300,000, the Associated Press reported.
Avenatti had petitioned United States District Court Judge Deborah Batts to move the case to Los Angeles, California, where he resides. But the judge could not find a reason to change the venue of the case. Avenatti also faces separate charges that he attempted to extort the Nike footwear company out of $20 million, and that case is also based in New York City.
The lawyer, who for much of last year was a near-constant presence on cable news and other media outlets and even toyed with a run for president, came crashing down hard earlier this year under a blizzard of criminal charges. The 48-year-old also faces charges in California of bilking clients out of money that they won in lawsuit settlements.
In the Daniels case, as AVN.com reported, prosecutors allege that after Daniels signed a publishing deal for her memoir Full Disclosure, Avenatti fraudulently induced the publisher to wire nearly $300,000 of her advance against royalties into a private bank account that he controlled.
Avenatti then dipped into the funds which rightly belonged to Daniels, prosecutors say, to support a high-living, jet-set lifestyle that included “plane tickets, hotel stays, meal delivery, dry cleaning and a monthly payment on a Ferrari.”
Avenatti has denied the charges and entered a not guilty plea in May, almost exactly 14 months after he first exploded onto the national media scene by filing Daniels’ lawsuit against Trump over a “hush” agreement that supposedly prevented her from discussing a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.
As soon as the suit was filed, Avenatti launched a non-stop media blitz in which he appeared in televised interviews on a near-daily basis, taunting Trump and Cohen at every stop.
Daniels fired Avenatti in March, just days after a federal judge dismissed her lawsuit against Trump and Cohen, saying the suit was irrelevant because both Trump and Cohen had agreed not to enforce the “hush” agreement.
But fallout from the lawsuit continues. Cohen is now serving a three-year federal prison sentence in part over the hush money payments he made to Daniels on Trump’s behalf. And the Manhattan District Attorney last month launched a new investigation into the payments—a probe that could ensnare Trump himself.
Photo by Showtime 'The Circus' / Wikimedia Commons
