Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who shot to national prominence for representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her legal wranglings with Donald Trump, has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail for trying to extort $20 million from athletic apparel maker Nike, the Wall Street Journal reports.
A Manhattan federal judge sentenced Avenatti Thursday afternoon for a plot to get the money from Nike to run an internal investigation, or Avenatti said he would release information about supposed corruption in Nike’s elite basketball program. Seeking an eight year sentence, prosecutors said Avenatti “betrayed his client’s trust and sought to enrich himself by weaponizing his public profile in an attempt to extort a publicly traded company out of tens of millions of dollars.”
Avenatti launched himself into the national spotlight by representing Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in her efforts to nullify a non-disclosure agreement she signed with Trump after having illicit sex with him while he was married to his third wife, Melania, and getting paid $130,000 to remain quiet about the affair so it wouldn’t hurt his 2016 presidential campaign.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer at the time, arranged the hush-money payments for Daniels and was reimbursed for the cost, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars for himself, with checks from the Trump Organization, some of which Trump himself signed after he was inaugurated in 2017.