Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti was convicted Friday by a jury of all three charges related to his efforts to extort up to $25 million from athletic apparel giant Nike, in what a top prosecutor called “an old-fashioned shakedown.”
The verdict in U.S. District Court in Manhattan came two years after Avenatti gained widespread notoriety for his representation of porn star Stormy Daniels in her legal disputes with President Donald Trump.
The bombastic attorney, who briefly flirted with running for the Democratic presidential nomination, faces two other pending federal criminal cases this spring related to alleged thefts of millions of dollars from clients, including Daniels, and other serious charges.
“I think he’s in a bit of a state of shock,” one of his defense attorneys, Danya Perry, told reporters after the verdict, which Avenatti plans to appeal.
“But he’s a fighter, as you all know, and he’s staying strong.”
Avenatti, 48, was accused in the Nike case of trying to shake down the publicly traded company by threatening to go public with alleged evidence that the company had bribed amateur basketball players and their families unless Nike paid him millions of dollars.
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