{"id":16603,"date":"2020-02-14T16:01:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T21:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=16603"},"modified":"2020-02-14T16:01:46","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T21:01:46","slug":"stormy-daniels-ex-lawyer-michael-avenatti-guilty-over-extortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2020\/02\/14\/stormy-daniels-ex-lawyer-michael-avenatti-guilty-over-extortion\/","title":{"rendered":"Stormy Daniels’ ex-lawyer Michael Avenatti guilty over extortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Avenatti, who represented porn star Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against President Trump, has been found guilty of attempted extortion.<\/p>\n

The lawyer was accused of seeking to extort up to $25m (\u00a318.9m) from Nike.<\/p>\n

He had threatened to release information that might be harmful to the popular sports brand.<\/p>\n

Avenatti emerged as a vocal critic of Mr Trump two years ago when he began representing Ms Daniels, and even suggested he might run for president.<\/p>\n

He was found guilty by a jury after a three-week trial and could face up to 42 years in prison when sentenced in June.<\/p>\n

What was Avenatti accused of?<\/h2>\n

Federal prosecutors in New York said Avenatti, 48, met a lawyer for Nike in March 2019. During their meeting, he threatened to release damaging information about Nike unless it paid him between $15m and $25m.<\/p>\n

At the time he approached Nike, Avenatti had been representing his then-client Gary Franklin, who ran a youth basketball league in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Court papers said Avenatti threatened to hold a press conference alleging Nike had made illicit payments to young basketball players in Los Angeles. Revealing this would wipe billions from Nike’s stock value, he had suggested.<\/p>\n

Nike immediately reported the matter to federal prosecutors. Avenatti was arrested shortly after announcing he would hold a news conference about a scandal surrounding the company.<\/p>\n

“This was an old-fashioned shakedown,” prosecutor Geoffrey Berman said at the time. The jury heard that Avenatti had been at least $11m in debt.<\/p>\n

Last month,\u00a0Avenatti’s lawyers said he was suffering while being held in solitary confinement<\/a>\u00a0and under 24-hour lockdown in the same Manhattan prison cell that housed Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.<\/p>\n

What about Stormy Daniels?<\/h2>\n
\"Stormy<\/a>
Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti in 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Avenatti formerly represented Stormy Daniels, who tried to sue the president to get out of a non-disclosure agreement she had signed before the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n

The non-disclosure agreement related to an affair she said he had with Mr Trump in 2006, but the case was eventually dismissed.<\/p>\n

In May last year, Avenatti was charged with defrauding her of book proceeds, and faces trial in New York in April. He denies all the charges.<\/p>\n

He also faces another trial in Los Angeles in May on accusations he defrauded clients and others of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Avenatti, who represented porn star Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against President Trump, has been found guilty of attempted extortion. The lawyer was accused of seeking to extort up to $25m (\u00a318.9m) from Nike. […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[952,6093,521,6094,4980],"class_list":{"0":"post-16603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-extortion","11":"tag-michael-avenatti","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-nike","14":"tag-stormy-daniels","15":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16605,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16603\/revisions\/16605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}