Michael Avenatti, the brash attorney who had been a leading foe of then-President Donald Trump, was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in prison for a brazen, botched scheme to extort athletic apparel giant Nike out of up to $25 million.
That sentence was much lower than the nine years that was the bottom of the sentencing range suggested by federal guidelines, and not anywhere close to “a substantial” prison term sought by federal prosecutors.
“Mr. Avenatti’s conduct was outrageous,” said Judge Paul Gardephe said in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he also sentenced Avenatti to three years of supervised release.
‘He hijacked his client’s claims, and he used him to further his own agenda, which was to extort Nike millions of dollars for himself.”
“He outright betrayed his client,” Gardephe said.
“Mr. Avenatti had become drunk on the power of his platform, or what he perceived the power of his platform to be.”
But Gardephe added that Avenatti deserved a lighter sentence than what was recommended by federal because, the judge said, “Mr. Avenatti has expressed what I believe to be severe remorse today.”
The judge also cited the brutal conditions in which he was kept for several months in a Manhattan federal prison after his 2019 arrest.
Gardephe also sharply noted, in justifying the lower-than-recommended sentence, how federal prosecutors had not criminally charged high-powered attorney Mark Geragos, whom prosecutors have said participated with Avenatti in the shakedown.
Avenatti, who started crying during a statement to the judge before he was sentenced, said, “I am truly sorry for all of the pain I caused to Mr. Franklin and others.”
That was in reference to Avenatti’s amateur basketball coach-client Gary Franklin, who he exploited in his audacious bid to get paid directly from Nike in his shakedown plot.
“I alone have destroyed my career, my relationships and my life. And there is no doubt I need to pay,” the 50-year-old Avenatti told Gardephe.
At one point, Avenatti broke down and took several moments to compose himself as he spoke about the effects of his conduct on his three children.
Franklin, in retaining Avenatti as his lawyer, had alleged corruption by Nike in purported payments to amateur basketball players.
Avenatti then leveraged that claim in early 2019 to demand not only a settlement with Franklin, but also a more lucrative consulting agreement from Nike for him and Geragos in exchange for avoiding a press conference in which he would air Franklin’s claims.
Avenatti warned Nike’s lawyer that the claims could “take ten billion dollars off your client’s” stock market capitalization.
“I’m not f—ing around with this, and I’m not continuing to play games,” Avenatti told Nike’s lawyers, shortly before his arrest.
Avenatti’s troubles are not over after this sentencing, in which prosecutors had asked for a prison term of around eight years, and in which defense lawyers had wanted him to get just six months in lockup.
The California lawyer faces two more pending federal criminal trials.
Next week, Avenatti is set to begin trial on a raft of charges in California, where prosecutors said he defrauded clients out of millions of dollars. One of those clients was a mentally ill paraplegic.
Next year, back in Manhattan federal court, Avenatti is scheduled to be tried on charges related to allegedly swindling another fallen client, porn star Storm Daniels, out of $300,000 in proceeds for a book she wrote.
Avenatti gained widespread fame, and infamy, for his bombastic representation of Daniels, who says she had sex with Trump once years before he ran for president.
Avenatti has denied any criminal wrongdoing.
During his sentencing Thursday, Avenatti noted that as a child, while other children dreamed of becoming professional athletes, said, “I dreamed about becoming a lawyer. About becoming a trial lawyer.”
“About doing good, and about pursuing and achieving justice.”
“For years I did just that, but then I lost my way. I betrayed my own values, my friends, my family and myself,” he said.
“I betrayed my profession. I became driven by the things that don’t matter in life. Over the past two years, your honor, I have thought to myself, why did this need to happen,” Avenatti said. ‘”I’ve learned that all the fame, money notoriety in the world is meaningless.”
Avenatti said that while most people want their children to be proud of their fathers, in the case of his own three children, “I want them to be ashamed” of him.
“Because if they’re ashamed, it means their moral compass is exactly what it should be,” he said.
Assistant United States Attorney Matthew Podolsky told Gardephe that Avenatti had a “profound lack of remorse” for his conduct.
“It’s about taking advantage of people and abuse of power and trust,” Podolsky said.
“He saw Mr. Franklin as a way to get rich, to get Mr. Avenatti rich.”
But Avenatti’s lawyer Perry argued for leniency, saying, “He’s had an epic fall, he’s been publicly shamed.”
Perry said that Avenatti, while pursuing and then obtaining a career in the law, “really did want to be the David fighting the Goliath.”
But, she noted, “He certainly lost his way as he went, and he knows that.”
“I can tell you … he’s a completely humbled man who’s been beaten down, by himself,” Perry said.
Perry also argued for less prison time because of the disparity between how Avenatti was treated with how Geragos has been treated.
“It’s impossible to discern a distinction between Mr. Avenatti’s conduct … and that of Mark Geragos, who they did not charge at all,” said that lawyer, Danya Perry.
“The Nike lawyers on the other side believed that Mr. Geragos was a full participant, and they felt as threatened and extorted from him as they did from Mr. Avenatti.”
