Stormy Daniels lawyer Micahel Avenatti found guilty of fraud over Donald Trump book compensation

Michael Avenatti was found guilty on Friday of defrauding Stormy Daniels of over $300,000 in compensation for authoring a book about an alleged tryst with former President Donald Trump.

As the verdict was read, Avenatti, who was acting as his own lawyer, stared straight ahead. It was yet another humiliating defeat for the California lawyer, who has been dogged by legal issues since briefly rising to prominence as one of Trump’s most outspoken critics on television news.

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“I’m very disappointed in the jury’s verdict,” Avenatti told reporters outside the federal courtroom in New York. “I’m looking forward to a full adjudication of all the issues on appeal.”

Avenatti was ordered to surrender to US marshals in California by US District Judge Jesse M. Furman on Monday. While awaiting the book proceeds trial and the retrial of a fraud case in a California federal court, Avenatti has postponed serving a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for an extortion conviction he received in 2020.

The date for sentencing has been scheduled for May 24. Daniels is expected to speak at his sentence, according to prosecutors.

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The result came just hours after the jury foreperson wrote a memo to the judge claiming that one juror was refusing to look at the evidence and was making her decision solely on her thoughts and emotions.

“She does not believe she needs to prove her side using evidence and refuses to show us how she has come to her conclusion,” the note said. ”Not going on any evidence, all emotions and does not understand this job of a jury.”

However, the decision was unanimous.

It came at the end of an unusual trial in which Avenatti dropped his counsel and elected to defend himself on the second day of the trial, setting up a face-to-face battle with Daniels, his former client, who appeared as a star witness in a new capacity.

After the verdict, Avenatti stated that he did not regret representing himself.

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Avenatti was depicted by prosecutors as a common thief and chronic liar. He reacted by portraying himself as a white knight who came to Daniels’ rescue until she turned against him.

He grilled her for two days about the charges that he defrauded her of book royalties — as well as ghost stories she’d recounted for a possible show about the supernatural world.

He is awaiting a retrial in Los Angeles on charges that he ripped off clients and others for millions of dollars, in addition to the term he has yet to begin serving for attempting to extort up to $25 million from sportswear giant Nike. Last year, he represented himself for six weeks before the case was dismissed due to a mistrial.

Daniels hired Avenatti to get out of a $130,000 hush payment agreement that prevented her from speaking publicly about an alleged sexual encounter that Trump claims never happened.

Avenatti used his representation of Daniels to make a series of cable TV appearances mocking and baiting Trump.

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When the FBI raided Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, over tax fraud and payments to women on Trump’s behalf, Avenatti added to the spectacle by bringing Daniels to the federal courthouse.

After Daniels heard that Avenatti had seized a portion of her $800,000 book deal for himself, the two’s relationship ended.

Avenatti has maintained that he is not guilty of wire fraud or aggravated identity theft.

He ditched his counsel and challenged witnesses himself after the opening speeches and two trial witnesses, setting up his interrogation of Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford.

Avenatti questioned her about comments she made about living in a haunted house in New Orleans for a potential show called “Spooky Babes.”

Daniels had previously spoken about an invisible assailant attacking her spouse, as well as interacting with the dead and a doll who addressed her as “mommy.”

Prosecutors claimed Avenatti was attempting to paint Daniels as insane, accusing him of using a “blame-the-victim” approach that failed to back up his claim that he deserved the money after spending millions of dollars representing Daniels.

“Whether you think it’s kooky to believe in the paranormal, whether you think it’s weird, she can believe whatever she wants and still be stolen from by the defendant and still deserve not to,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mathew Podolsky told the jury.

Prosecutors said text conversations revealed Avenatti regularly misled to Daniels in 2018 when she questioned him about when she would get a major instalment on the book contract she was owed. He’d already spent the money on airfare, lunch, and wages for his insolvent law practise, they claimed.

Podolsky compared Avenatti to a store cashier who took $1,000 from a register because he thought he earned a bonus for his good work.

At the conclusion of the two-week trial, Avenatti maintained that the government had failed to prove its case.

“I’m Italian. I like Italian food. Ladies and gentlemen, the case that the government is trying to feed you has a giant cockroach in the middle of the plate,” he told the jury. “Would you eat that dish or would you send it back? I submit that you would send it back.”