During arguments before the Second U. S. Court of Appeals for the U. S. tour in Manhattan, federal public defender Daniel Habib said Avenatti only protects its consumer Gary Franklin, a young basketball coach, and that “everyone agrees” that threatening to disclose corruption is not a crime.
But the three-judge appeals court questioned whether the heavily indebted Avenatti was looking for himself before Franklin, who testified that he needed no investigation and only sought to win back his Nike sponsorship.
“This is what I would charitably call a curious negotiation,” the circuit trial on Reena Raggi told Habib. it. “
Circuit Judge John Walker said jurors could find in Avenatti’s request an investigation “a canopy for this large payout that went far beyond what Mr. Franklin had raised, to save a struggling company. “
U. S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said the jury could convict Avenatti by concluding that “Avenatti’s goal is to be influenced in his portrayal of Franklin. . . through payment. “
Nike has denied wrongdoing.
In 2018, Avenatti rose to fame by representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against Donald Trump stemming from a case the former US president said never happened.
But his career was destroyed after his arrest in March 2019 in the Nike case, where he was convicted of extortion and fair service fraud and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.
Avenatti was later convicted of defrauding Daniels of cash from an e-book contract and admitted to cheating 4 other clients, including a paraplegic, out of millions of dollars.
Daniels’ sentence, which added 2 1/2 years to his sentence, and his 14-year sentence for his guilty plea, look nice.
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The case is U. S. v. Avenatti, 2d U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 21-1778.