MANHATTAN (CN) — The Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday declined to overturn Michael Avenatti’s 2022 fraud convictions for pocketing nearly $300,000 from the $800,000 publishing advance for adult film actress Stormy Daniels’ autobiography.
Avenatti was sentenced to four years in prison after a New York jury convicted him on counts of wire fraud and identity theft for diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars that a publisher was paying his client, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, for her tell-all memoir in 2018.
On appeal, Avenatti argued that U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman's instructions to jurors from were confusing, prejudicial and at times irrelevant, warranting reversal of the conviction.
A three-judge panel on the Second Circuit was not persuaded to overturn the lower court’s judgment, concluding in its nine-page unsigned opinion “that any error in the jury instructions was harmless.”
“The evidence against Avenatti was overwhelming,” the panel wrote. “The evidence showed that Avenatti diverted funds that were owed to his client to his own bank account, and then sought to prevent his client from learning of the diversion so that he could conceal his fraud.”
The panel was made up by U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Menashi, a Donald Trump appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judges Eunice Lee and Sarah Merriam, both Joe Biden appointees.
During five days of witness testimony at Avenatti's trial in the Southern District of New York, federal prosecutors showed text messages and bank records that demonstrated how the attorney steered a pair of $148,750 installments of Daniels’ book advance to a trust account he controlled.
At trial, Avenatti argued a good faith defense against all charges and told jurors there had been insufficient evidence to prove he ever intended to defraud Daniels.
He faced up to 20 years on the wire fraud charge and a mandatory two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft.
Although Judge Furman ultimately imposed a four-year sentence — two years for each of the counts on which Avenatti was convicted — the judge agreed to let him serve out 18 months concurrently with his sentence for his separate conviction of threatening to extort Nike. At the end of the Nike sentence, Avenatti will serve another 30 months in prison for defrauding Daniels.
Because his felony convictions in the Southern District of New York led to a suspension of his law license, Avenatti is no longer eligible to practice law in California.
The California celebrity attorney briefly rose to fame in 2018 while representing Daniels in her case against then-President Donald Trump, when she sought to go public about a purported affair she had with Trump a decade earlier — a story Trump's attorneys paid her $130,000 to keep quiet before the 2016 presidential election.
That hush money, and Trump’s subsequent recordkeeping regarding the payments, resurfaced last year at the heart of the accusations underlying the former president’s upcoming trial later this month in Manhattan criminal court. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office will connect the payoffs to an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump continues to deny that he had sex with Daniels, and has pleaded not guilty to the 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan district attorney’s case.
Follow @jruss_jruss
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
Appeals court backs San Juan dredging project May 3, 2024