Remember Michael Avenatti? He Was Just Sentenced To 4 Years in Prison for Stealing From Stormy Daniels

On the list of Trump-era sleazebags I really enjoy not having to think about anymore, Michael Avenatti is definitely pretty high up.

In 2018, Avenatti made headlines as the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the former porn actress who claimed Donald Trump had his lawyer Michael Cohen intimidate her and pay her off to keep quiet about their alleged sexual relationship. Avenatti tried to present himself as a defender of women but he consistently proved himself to be merely opportunistic, as well as a huge scumbag.

Despite trying to gain fame from a lawsuit centered on sexual misconduct and abuses of power, the way Avenatti talked about victims of sexual assault and harassment was sleazy and gross. He was the walking definition of a fake ally. At one point he also said that the Democratic nominee running against Trump in 2020 would have to be a “white male” because their words “carry more weight”—perpetuating myths of misogyny and racism in order to discount the candidates in a historically diverse campaign field because he wanted to be that white male.

Well, now Avenatti is going to prison for four years for stealing from the very woman he tried to use for fake feminist clout.

Avenatti was convicted on two counts of wire fraud and identity theft for illegally pocketing $300,000 of Daniels’ $800,000 2018 book advance. Daniels has also previously accused him of filing a defamation suit on her behalf without her knowledge or consent, and also setting up a GoFundMe campaign in her name, but I’m not sure if either of those things were part of this conviction. Avenatti was also convicted of extortion last year after threatening Nike with bad publicity unless the company paid him $25 million. In fact, when this new sentence came in, Avenatti was already in custody, serving a 2 1/2 year term for that conviction.

During his sentencing in the Nike case, the judge told Avenatti that he “had become drunk on the power of his platform, or what he perceived the power of his platform to be. He had become someone who operated as if the laws and the rules that applied to everyone else didn’t apply to him.” That sounds spot on.

When Avenatti’s latest conviction came last month, Daniels expressed gratitude to the jury for taking Avenatti’s crimes seriously, noting that “if it had gone the other way it would set a very scary precedent for people in the adult film industry.”

We all know (and all too well right now especially) that anyone who falls short of the mythical ideal of the “perfect victim” can be denied justice on all levels.

“Grateful to the jurors that set aside prejudged notions about me or my work and the things I have done, and they put that aside and looked at the evidence,” Daniels said.

(via NBC News, image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)