Michael Avenatti was hailed as a hero by the Left.
His legal attacks on Donald Trump earned him national fame from Democrats.
But now, Avenatti was just sentenced to over a dozen years in prison for one shocking crime.
Michael Avenatti, the disgraced anti-Trump lawyer whose legal attacks on Donald Trump once earned him a national following and even calls for him to serve as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2020, was just sentenced in court to over a dozen years in prison for committing fraud.
ABC News reports, “Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti was sentenced on Monday to 14 years in federal prison for defrauding his clients and for obstructing IRS efforts to collect payroll taxes from his coffee business. He was also ordered to pay $7 million in restitution.”
Avenatti was embroiled in a massive scandal following revelations that he attempted to leverage the Left’s hatred for Trump in order to enrich himself.
For years, Avenatti used the Left’s hatred of Trump to make a name for himself.
Avenatti was routinely invited on liberal news networks, authored columns in liberal newspapers, and earned the support of Democrat politicians and media personalities alike.
His fame had grown so much that by 2019, Avenatti was routinely being floated as a presidential candidate for Democrats to challenge Donald Trump in 2020.
But then it all began to fall apart.
“An indictment against Avenatti stated that he stole millions of dollars from clients after they received settlements in various cases. Those funds were supposed to only flow through Avenatti but stayed with him instead, according to prosecutors,” adds ABC News.
“One of the clients who said he was never paid was Geoffrey Johnson, who is paraplegic. Johnson won a $4 million settlement against Los Angeles County in 2015. Prosecutors said that money was paid to Avenatti but was never given to Johnson.”
Avenatti engaged in multiple examples of theft, even going so far as to try and extort Nike for millions of dollars right before he was arrested by federal prosecutors.
His attempt at an “old-fashioned shakedown” against Nike involved Avenatti attempting to threaten the company with the release of allegedly damaging information unless the shoe company agreed to pay him $20 million.
That ultimately proved to be the straw which broke the camel’s back, resulting in Avenatti being arrested and charged with multiple federal accounts of wire fraud, bank fraud, embezzlement, and more.
And now, Avenatti has finally been sentenced to more than a dozen years in prison.
In a statement issued after the sentencing was handed down, one of the US attorneys who had prosecuted Avenatti called him “a corrupt lawyer who claimed he was fighting for the little guy. In fact, he only cared about his own selfish interests.”
“He stole millions of dollars from his clients – all to finance his extravagant lifestyle that included a private jet and race cars. As a result of his illegal acts, he has lost his right to practice law in California, and now he will serve a richly deserved prison sentence,” added federal prosecutors.
