This content was published on January 24, 2022 – 18:41
New York, Jan 24 (EFE) .- The trial against controversial lawyer Michael Avenatti for allegedly stealing $300,000 from porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual relationship with former US President Donald Trump, began this Monday in New York. York.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that Avenatti, Daniels’s former lawyer, took $300,000 from the actress of the $800,000 that the porn star agreed to receive for writing a book about her memoirs.
According to the indictment, Avenatti sent Daniels’ literary agent a document “allegedly signed” by her instructing him to send payments for the book to an account controlled by him.
“In total, Avenatti stole approximately $300,000” from the victim, and owes him half, the Prosecutor’s Office said in a document last May.
In July 2021, Avenatti was already sentenced to two years in prison for trying to extort money from Nike.
The lawyer tried to pressure the sports firm to pay him $20 million in exchange for not disclosing alleged evidence in his possession that Nike had bribed college basketball players and their families.
In the case that begins today, the main witness of the Prosecutor’s Office will, of course, be Daniels herself, who rose to fame along with Avenatti after denouncing Donald Trump.
In a statement released this weekend by his defense, Avenatti insisted on his innocence and assured that the government is spending millions of dollars to prosecute him while “it continues to allow Trump and his conspirators to walk free without consequences for their criminal conduct,” as picked up by several local media.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to paying Daniels $130,000 to buy his silence, just days before the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims that she and Trump had sex once in 2006, after he married former first lady Melania Trump and gave birth to their son, Barron. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.
The actress later tried, with the help of Avenatti, to break the silence agreement reached with the former president in a court in Los Angeles, California, where the Superior Court agreed with her and ordered Trump to pay another $44,100 in legal fees. EFE
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