Disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing book proceeds from Stormy Daniels, the porn star he represented during her legal battles against former President Donald Trump.
The California lawyer was sentenced to four years in a Manhattan federal courtroom on Thursday. Since he is currently incarcerated, he will spend another 2 1/2 years in prison in addition to the 2 1/2 years he is already serving for another fraud conviction.
Judge Jesse M Furman said Avenatti’s crime was ‘out of desperation’ at a time when his law firm was struggling. He said the sentence ‘will send a message to lawyers’ of the consequences if they go astray.
During trial earlier this year, the disgraced lawyer represented himself while prosecutors said he stole about $300,000 from Daniels from her advance on Full Disclosure, her book that was published in the fall of 2018.
‘It has been three years since she discovered what Mr. Avenatti has done and she was devastated,’ Clark Brewster, Daniels’ current lawyer, said.
‘The regularly accepted theme was this guy was a great lawyer but … his legal scholarship based on the cases we took over is in doubt. This was a deceitful scheme. It wasn’t a mistake. It was calculated,’ he added.
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