Stormy Daniels, her real name being Stephanie Clifford, is an American adult film star, erotic dancer, and 18-plus personality that is best known for her involvement in a scandal with current United States President Donald Trump. If you don’t remember, the scandal involved Trump paying Daniels some $130,000 to stay quiet about an affair the pair enjoyed with one another back in 2006, when Trump’s longtime wife Melania was pregnant with the couple’s son, Barron.
Although Trump wasn’t directly responsible for handing over the payment to Stormy Daniels, he ordered his attorney Michael Cohen, also known as Trump’s personal “fixer,” to fork over the payment to the adult film star just a few weeks before the 2016 United States presidential election took place.
Part of the deal involved Daniels signing an NDA, which stands for nondisclosure agreement, in which she couldn’t legally talk about anything related to her romp with Trump 13 years ago.
Just over a year ago, in March 2018, Daniels pushed forward a lawsuit in court with Trump as the defendant, alleging that the nondisclosure agreement referenced above was not valid because Trump failed to sign it. Stormy did this through her high-powered attorney, Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti, who began practicing law in the United States in 2000, protected Stormy Daniels in media appearances, often appearing in her place on major television networks’ programs, as well as in a separate lawsuit in which Daniels attempted to sue President Trump for defamation of character.
Avenatti even represented the woman who would later reveal herself as Julie Swetnick, a high school classmate of current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who claimed that Kavanaugh was in the vicinity of her when she was raped by several men at a party. Swetnick further stated that Kavanaugh often drank to excess and came on too strongly to women.
Although Avenatti has built his image as an all-star attorney, that image has all but gone down the drain.
On Wednesday, May 22, 2019, a Manhattan-based federal grand jury found enough evidence not just to charge Michael Avenatti with one count of fraud and another of aggravated identity theft – its members were able to hand down indictments for the two charges.
The indictments allege that Avenatti took some $300,000 from Daniels without her permission or knowledge. He supposedly sourced the money from Daniels’ contract to publish a book.
Avenatti also wrongfully, illegally – allegedly, that is – tried to extort Nike for some two dozen million dollars.
