NEW YORK –
Michael Avenatti was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison for cheating on client Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who catapulted him to fame, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in book profits.
The California lawyer, who is currently in prison, learned of his fate in Manhattan Federal Court, where Judge Jesse M. Furman said the sentence would mean Avenatti would spend two and a half more years in prison in addition to 2 years. half he already has. serve after another conviction for fraud.
The judge said Avenatti’s crime against Daniels was done “out of desperation” when his law firm was fighting. He called Avenatti’s behavior “blatant and blatant” and blamed it on “blind ambition”.
Before the verdict was announced, Avenatti, dressed in his prison uniform, suffocated several times while making a lengthy statement, saying he had “disappointed dozens of people and failed in a cataclysmic manner.”
At trial earlier this year, Avenatti represented himself, questioning for hours his former client about his experiences in early 2018, when he signed a book deal that provided a $ 800,000 payment. Prosecutors said he illegally pocketed about $ 300,000 of his advance on “Full Disclosure,” released in the fall of 2018.
The publication of the book came at a time when Avenatti’s practice as a lawyer was failing financially, although he regularly appeared on cable TV news channels. In the apparitions, he attacked then-US President Donald Trump while representing Daniels in a lawsuit to release her from a $ 130,000 silent payment she received shortly before the 2016 presidential election to stay in silence about a date he said he had had with Trump a decade earlier. . Trump denied it.
Daniels was not in court. A lawyer spoke on her behalf and said it was “truly shocking” that Avenatti tried to present himself as an advocate for his clients during his statement.
His conviction for aggravated identity theft required a mandatory sentence of two years in prison. He is already serving a 2-and-a-half-year sentence for attempting to extort Nike. Avenatti was convicted of threatening to ruin the shoemaker’s reputation by failing to pay him up to $ 25 million.
And he faces a new lawsuit in California on charges of cheating customers and millions of dollars there.
In a presentation, Avenatti’s lawyers quoted a letter of apology that Avenatti recently wrote to Daniels in which he said, “I’m so sorry.”
But prosecutors in a sentencing hearing last week urged him to face “substantial” additional time in prison for an e-fraud conviction and criticized his letter of apology, saying the 51-year-old he did not apologize for his actual crime.
And they recalled that during an “extremely long” interrogation, “he reprimanded his victim for lewd language and for being a difficult client, questioned her invasively about marital and family difficulties, and tried to drive her so mad.” as he did during the course of his fraud to prevent his own agent and publisher from responding to his requests for help. “
“The defendant certainly had every right to defend himself at trial. But he is not entitled to any benefit to show remorse, having done so only when appropriate and only after trying to humiliate the her victim in a public trial, and denigrating and insulting her for months to her agent and publisher while protesting as taking her case against the powerful who might have taken advantage of her, “prosecutors wrote.