Attorneys for former Stormy Daniels mouthpiece Michael Avenatti revealed that the felonious former lawyer in indigent and can no longer afford his legal counsel ahead of his criminal trials set to take place later this year.
Lawyer Dean Steward filed a motion in federal court on Saturday asking the judge to approve taxpayer funding to stay on as Avenatti’s attorney under regulations that assist indigent clients. Steward argued that receiving taxpayer funding would be a cheaper alternative for the federal government than having Avenatti switch to a public defender, who would have to restart the cases.
Indigent
“The bottom line is that Mr. Avenatti has run out of funds, and faces a complex trial lasting as long as six weeks,” Steward wrote.
Steward said that Avenatti “does not have funds to pay counsel” and said that allowing him to stay on the case as the attorney rather than appointing a public defender would “save considerable taxpayer funds, over starting fresh with new … counsel.”
Avenatti was previously represented by the federal public defender’s office after his first legal team dropped him because he could not afford their legal fees. Steward picked up Avenatti’s case from the public defender’s office shortly after he was dropped by his first legal team.
Avenatti faces more than 30 charges for fraud, tax evasion, and other crimes and is awaiting two trials for allegedly stealing Daniels’s book advance and committing fraud in California.
He was also found guilty of extorting Nike earlier this year, but he has not yet been sentenced in the case. He was being held behind bars but has since been released because of the coronavirus pandemic and has since been staying with a childhood friend in Southern California.
Avenatti represented Daniels in a lawsuit seeking to break a confidentiality agreement so she could speak about her alleged affair with Trump before he ran for president.
While representing Daniels, Avenatti appeared dozens of times on cable news programs and even flirted with a presidential run.
3 Responses
I say that if Dr. Avenatti is truly indigent, let his attorney work under public defender funding. The qualifier is that he must truly work for the pittance that public defenders get in this country. If he is not willing to do so, turn the case over to the public defender’s office. I don’t believe that paying this attorney his normal rates would be cheaper than turning the case over to the public defender even if the trials must be re-heard like he is attempting to claim (which is not likely to be the case). I hope the latter happens, he gets a shitty attorney that will force him to plead his remaining cases out like everyone else in that situation has to and that he goes to jail for decades to come. I also hope Dr. Avenatti gets a bad case of COVID in jail because of what a shitty person he is, he shouldn’t have been allowed out in the first place. If he gets COVID in prison, he will only receive minimal medical treatment and if it is a severe enough case he will die like the pig he is. Pending death, he should be forced to work a shitty manual labor job in prison for fifty cents per hour like most of the other inmates.