The disgraced former critic of former President Donald Trump and one-time Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Avenatti was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for attempting to extort over ten million dollars from Nike, Inc. two years ago.

The Details

Avenatti actually came out ahead, simply due to the fact that the final sentence was actually higher than what he could have received, which was over nine years.

While he was reading the sentencing to the defendant, Judge Paul Gardephe of the Southern District of New York noted the following: “Mr. Avenatti had become drunk on the power of his platform. Or what he perceived the power of his platform to be. He had become someone who operated as if the laws and rules that apply to everyone else did not apply to him.”

Avenatti was allegedly crying in the courtroom during his concluding speech prior to sentencing.

Avenatti was indicted for extortion and wire fraud for attempting to shake down Nike by threatening to go public with a damaging story about the company. The former lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels had wanted at least $20 million in hush money. It was just barely before the charges against Avenatti were announced in March 2019 that Avenatti posted a Tweet where he was warned that he was going to hold a news conference that would be exposing “criminal conduct that reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball.”

Additionally, the FBI has recorded audio of Avenatti discussing this with Nike’s lawyers in March 2019.

“I’m not f***ing around with this, and I’m not continuing to play games,” he said, according to court documents. “I’ll go take $10 billion off your client’s market cap.”

“While the defendant may have tried to hide behind legal terms and a suit and tie, the jury clearly saw the defendant’s scheme for what it was — an old-fashioned shakedown,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement after the jury came back with a verdict of guilty against Avenatti in February 2020.

What else?

Avenatti rose to prominence after his high-handed performance representing Stormy Daniels in 2018. Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was a porn star who claimed to have had a relationship with Donald Trump and had been paid $130,000 in hush money as a result of it. Ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen claims that he was the one who facilitated the payment buying the porn star’s silence.

It wasn’t long before Avenatti became a left-wing media darling and appeared on networks such as CNN, MSNBC and many others over hundreds of times.

What’s next?

Unfortunately, this sentencing is only the first of many for Avenatti, who is scheduled to stand trial for litany of charges alleging that he defrauded a number of his clients out of millions of dollars, including a mentally ill paraplegic.

Avenatti is also going to be tried in 2022 for a third time because he is being accused of cheating Stormy Daniels out of $300,000 in proceeds from a memoir she wrote.

Daniels later fired Avenatti and she recently posted on her Instagram account that she thought it was sad that “it appears that what Michael Avenatti did to me was just the tip of the iceberg of deceit. I am not surprised his dishonesty has been revealed on a grand scale.”