AND THIS CROOK INTENDED TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT

Michael Avenatti arrested and charged with trying to extort $20M from Nike

By Andrew Denney and Bruce Golding

New York Post
March 25, 2019

Lawyer Michael Avenatti is facing coast-to-coast charges in separate extortion and fraud schemes, the feds announced Monday.

Avenatti — who shot to fame representing porn star Stormy Daniels over her claims of an affair with President Trump and more recently the parents of Azriel Clary, one of R. Kelly’s alleged “sex slaves” — was arrested in Manhattan on charges that he tried to shake down the sneaker giant Nike for $20 million last week, authorities said.

“I’ll go take $10 billion off your client’s market cap … I’m not fucking around,” court papers say he told Nike lawyers during a conference call Wednesday.

That conversation came a day after Avenatti met with Nike’s lawyers and “threatened to release damaging information” if the company didn’t pay off Avenatti and an unidentified co-conspirator, according to a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.

The Wall Street Journal identified the alleged co-conspirator as lawyer Mark Geragos, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Avenatti’s alleged “not fucking around” threat allegedly came on the eve of Nike’s quarterly earnings report, and two days before the start of the NCAA’s “March Madness” college basketball tournament.

The charges against him were revealed just minutes after Avenatti — who recently flirted with a Democratic presidential campaign — tweeted that he would be holding a Tuesday morning news conference about “a major high school/college basketball scandal perpetrated by @Nike that we have uncovered.”

“This criminal conduct reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball,” he claimed.

During an afternoon news conference, Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Avenatti told Nike that if his demands weren’t met, the company would be “inflicted with cut after cut after cut after cut.”

“A suit and tie doesn’t mask the fact that at its core this was an old-fashioned shakedown,” Berman said.

As for the charges against him in California, prosecutors in the Golden State allege that Avenatti stole a client’s $1.6 million settlement and spent the cash on personal expenses and debts, and to run his law firm and former coffee business, Tully’s Coffee, which had stores in Los Angeles and Seattle.

Avenatti is also accused of defrauding a bank in Mississipi by using fake tax returns to borrow $4.1 million, even though he never filed personal tax returns for 2011, 2012 and 2013 — and still owes the IRS more than $850,000 in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest for 2009 and 2010, the feds said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: According to the Daily Mail, Avenatti said that he had proof Nike had made illegal payments to at least three high school basketball player's families.

Mark Geragos is a celebrity lawyer who has represented child molester Michael Jackson among other Hollywood stars, as well as flag-disrespecting Colin Kaepernick and lately hoaxer Jussie Smollett.
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MICHAEL AVENATTI IN DEEP DOO-DOO

by Bob Walsh

Michael Avenatti, 48, sometimes known as The Creepy Porn Lawyer for his representation of "Stormy Daniels" in a lawsuit against Donald Trump (which she lost and had to pay costs), was arrested on both coasts.

It seems, if the prosecutors got it right, that he engaged in an incredibly heavy-handed and stupid shakedown of Nike. He is alleged to have approached them with an assertion that he had dirt on them and that if they did not hire him to do an "internal investigation" of their company for $20 million he would let the dirt out. An unindicted co-conspirator was mentioned, he is supposed to be another very high profile lawyer who MAY have ratted him out.

In addition to these charges filed in New York he was also the subject of a complaint alleging embezzlement of a client's money in L.A.

Ordinarily I would say this shoots down his shot at the Democrat nomination for President, but with Democrats you never know.