It turns out that hate-Trump leftists can’t get away with any crime they wish to commit. At least not yet.
Last week, a jury acquitted Clinton Mafia associate and Russia Collusion Hoaxer Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI.
But two days later, at long last, a judge sentenced disgraced porn lawyer Michael Avenatti to four years in the slammer for bilking client Stormy Daniels, the porn queen who falsely said she had sex with former President Donald Trump, out of almost half of an $800,000 book advance.
Avenatti was a nobody until 2018, when he falsely accused then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of masterminding gang rape parties in high school.
That was a lie. And it wasn’t long until prosecutors exposed Avenatti as a crook who stole from clients and tried to shake down a major corporation.
Stealin’ From Stormy
A jury convicted Avenatti in February of stealing from the porn queen.
After Daniels inked a book deal that would, purportedly, disclose steamy details about her affair with Trump, Avenatti “stole a portion of the advance on that deal by directing her literary agent to send the money to a bank account Avenatti controlled,” as the Justice Department explained:
Avenatti stole two installments of Daniels’ book advance, totaling $297,500. Avenatti sent to Daniels’ literary agent a fraudulent and unauthorized letter purporting to be from Daniels and appearing to bear her signature, which directed that future payments be sent to a bank account controlled by Avenatti. In fact, Avenatti wrote the letter himself, never received authorization from Daniels, and caused Daniels’ signature to be copied and pasted from another document onto the letter without her consent.
Avenatti spent a $148,750 installment on the advance on himself, including a $3,900 monthly lease on a Ferrari — and when Daniels asked about the money, Avenatti flat-out lied to her about it. He told Daniels the publisher never cut a check.
But about a month after stealing that installment, Daniels threatened to go to the publisher, and so Avenatti secured a loan to cover the ill-gotten booty. Then he pulled the same trick with another installment.
“A short time later, Avenatti pressured the publisher to make the next installment payment early, purportedly at Daniels’ request though in truth without her awareness,” DOJ continued:
Avenatti soon received that installment, another payment of $148,750, which he again spent for his own purposes. For months after he had stolen this installment, Daniels repeatedly asked Avenatti about the missing payment and, after he again falsely claimed that the publisher had not made the payment, asked that Avenatti, as her lawyer, assist her in obtaining the book payment. Avenatti continued to lie and claim that he was fighting with the publisher on her behalf when, as he knew, the publisher had made the payment early, but that he had stolen it. At the same time, further to avoid discovery of his scheme, Avenatti, purporting to act as Daniels’ attorney, told her publisher and literary agent not to respond to direct requests for information from Daniels.
Daniels eventually confessed that she never had sex with Trump.
Lying About Kavanaugh
But Daniels isn’t Avenatti’s only victim. He tried to extort more than $20 million from Nike and landed a 30-month prison term for that.
Federal prosecutors also accused Avenatti of trying to defraud five clients including a mentally ill paraplegic, but that case ended in a mistrial because prosecutors failed to disclose information to the defense.
Yet it appears that Avenatti will never pay for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about Kavanaugh.
In September 2018, after crackpot professor Christian Blasey Ford falsely accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a party when they were in high school, Avenatti stepped forward with a deranged client, Julie Swetnick. The pair falsely accused Kavanaugh of attending high-school parties where he drugged women and joined gang rapes. Swetnick confessed the lie, but Avenatti persisted and produced another “client” whom he said would verify Swetnick’s claims.
That woman denied telling Avenatti any such thing. The fast-talking porn lawyer, she said, “twisted my words.”
Then committee chief Charles Grassley sent two referrals to the FBI to investigate Avenatti’s “fraud” and “materially false statements.”
Nothing ever came of it.
