A few months ago he was teasing a run for president on the Democratic ticket; now he’s out on $300,000 bond with the agreement not to run from the feds. On Monday, celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti — the former attorney of porn star Stormy Daniels who was given inordinate amounts of airtime on mainstream media outlets to level accusations against Donald Trump — was arrested and charged with extortion and bank and wire fraud in an alleged “shakedown” attempt of one of the world’s most influential companies. His alleged co-conspirator is reportedly none other than fellow celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, who has represented embattled actor and singer Jussie Smollett and former NFL QB Colin Kaepernick.
More details about the case have come to light and the old saw that “(alleged) truth is stranger than fiction” comes to mind. The charges against Avenatti have been brought by prosecutors from deep blue states on both coasts: New York and California. Their claims are straight out of a movie: Avenatti attempted to extort tens of millions from Nike with the threat that he’d use his celebrity status to do massive financial and PR damage to them if they didn’t “retain” him and his partner to conduct a faux internal investigation into alleged illegal actions by Nike employees.
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