Seizing on her widening renown, Ms. Daniels, whose authorized identify is Stephanie Clifford, signed an $800,000 contract to write down a guide, “Full Disclosure,” for St. Martin’s Press. Mr. Avenatti flirted briefly with the thought of working for president. However their alliance dissolved amid acrimony in early 2019 after Ms. Daniels accused Mr. Avenatti of stealing.
Since then, Mr. Avenatti has been a felony defendant in a number of circumstances. He was convicted in 2020 of attempting to extort tens of millions of {dollars} from Nike. A lawyer representing him in that case later filed a discover of enchantment.
In a separate case, Mr. Avenatti was accused of stealing tens of millions of {dollars} from 5 shoppers, together with a paraplegic man who gained a $4 million settlement from Los Angeles County, and of mendacity about his enterprise and revenue. That case resulted in a mistrial final yr after a decide dominated that prosecutors had withheld monetary knowledge from the protection.
If that end result led Mr. Avenatti to consider he might salvage his popularity as a populist lawyer who helped underdogs, his conviction within the case involving Ms. Daniels would seem to all however extinguish that prospect.
“The defendant was a lawyer who stole from his personal consumer,” a prosecutor, Robert Sobelman, informed jurors throughout closing arguments on Wednesday. “She thought he was her advocate, however he betrayed her and he informed lies to attempt to cowl all of it up.”
Throughout his personal closing argument, Mr. Avenatti, who represented himself on the trial, informed the jury that there was inadequate proof to show he had supposed “to defraud” or “to hurt” Ms. Daniels.
“It’s the authorities’s burden, it’s their obligation, to indicate you that I possessed fraudulent intent and lacked good religion,” Mr. Avenatti mentioned, including: “They haven’t carried out that.”