LOS ANGELES—One week after Michael Avenatti, the formerly high-flying lawyer who turned himself into an overnight celebrity by representing AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels, requested a new delay of his sentencing date on a conviction for attempted extortion, a federal judge granted that request, according to a report by The New York Law Journal.
Previously unknown outside the California legal community, Avenatti in early 2018 began representing Daniels in her lawsuit against Donald Trump, appearing on television nearly every day to attack Trump and gaining a national following in the process. But the walls came crashing down a year later, when federal prosecutor hit him with multiple accusations of bilking his clients, including Daniels, to finance his jet-setting lifestyle.
Prosecutors also charged him with attempting to extort $20 million from the Nike Corporation, by threatening to expose alleged payments by Nike to youth basketball stars while they still held amateur status. In February, after a three-week trial, a jury convicted Avenatti on extortion and wire fraud charges — carrying a possible 42-year sentence that, in theory, could keep Avenatti behind bars until the age of 91.
Avenatti was release from a New York City federal jail in April due to concerns that he could contract COVID-19 behind bars, and allowed to stay under house arrest at the home of a friend in Venice, California, where he currently resides. But he had been scheduled to return to New York June 17 for sentencing in the Nike case. That date was later pushed to August 19, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Last week, Avenatti and his lawyer Scott Srebnick asked a federal judge to delay the sentencing again, saying that fast-rising coronavirus case numbers in California and Florida, where Srebnick is based, make travel to New York risky and burdensome. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has imposed a requirement that visitors from those two states, and 20 others, quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in that state.
On Wednesday, United States Southern District of New York Judge Paul G. Gardephe accepted Avenatti’s reasoning, putting off the embattled lawyer’s sentencing hearing for an additional 50 days, to October 7.
But the potential 42-year sentence is not Avenatti’s only worry. He next faces a trial in New York on charges that he embezzled nearly $300,000 from Daniels. He is then set to be tried in California on perhaps the most serious set of charges — a 36-count indictment that he swindled millions in legal settlement cash from a series of clients, including a mentally ill paraplegic man who resided in an assisted living facility, supported only by disability payments.
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