Michael Avenatti, the ex-lawyer-turned convicted felon who is already waiting to serve a 30-month jail sentence over his attempt to extort shoemaker Nike for $25 million, may face up to 22 years more after being found guilty of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his former client Stormy Daniels.
Avenatti, 50, was convicted by a jury in a New York Federal District Court on Friday afternoon on wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges for siphoning off nearly $300,000 from the $800,000 that Daniels was supposed to receive for her 2018 book ‘Full Disclosure.'
The book offered details from her alleged 2006 affair with Trump and was one of the many released between 2017 and 2021 to try to ride on the coattails of the business mogul-turned president’s persona.
The disgraced lawyer has been ordered to surrender to US marshals in California by Monday and is expected to be sentenced in May.
Daniels told the New York Post Saturday that she would like Avenatti get "the maximum" sentence possible for what he did, along with an apology. "I am not really holding my breath for either," she said. "He showed absolutely no remorse, lying about me right until the end," the retired adult movie star added.
Daniels also noted that she doesn't expect to get the money back, because the former lawyer doesn't have it.
Avenatti told reporters he was “very disappointed in the jury’s verdict,” and said he looked “forward to a full adjudication of all of the issues on appeal.”
Avenatti represented Daniels in 2018 as she tried to break a non-disclosure agreement she signed with Trump’s lawyers in exchange for a $130,000 hush payment shortly before the 2016 presidential election-related to an alleged affair.
Before their relationship soured, Daniels and Avenatti were celebrated by anti-Trump politicians and media as “the resistance” to the “Trump regime.”
Avenatti has yet to face a retrial of a separate case brought by five former clients, including a paraplegic man, accusing him of stealing millions of dollars.
Last year, the lawyer lost a $250 million defamation case against Fox News over the outlet’s coverage of his arrest for suspected domestic violence.