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Michael Avenatti has more experience than most with fleeting media stardom, and while he won’t name names, he says many members of the press are happy to toss you aside if you no longer fit their preferred narrative.
“I don’t think it’s a big secret were I to say that — and this is not true with the entire media — but there are many members of the media that as soon as you no longer fit their purpose, as soon as you can no longer assist them in what they’re trying to accomplish, they attempt to throw you on the trash pile of history,” Avenatti told in a phone interview from federal prison in California.
Avenatti, known for his constant media presence in 2018 while representing Stormy Daniels in litigation against then-President Trump, crashed and burned hard as his criminal activity came to light. He’s serving 19 years in prison for a wide array of financial crimes, including stealing from Daniels, evading the IRS, defrauding other clients and trying to extort Nike for $25 million.
Before that, he made more than 250 television appearances, most of them on CNN and MSNBC, over the course of a year beginning in 2018. He often taunted the White House and made predictions that his client’s revelations could lead to Trump’s political demise.
Michael Avenatti spoke with Fox News Digital from his prison in California. (Screenshot/FNC)
He was asked to co-host “The View,” was a featured guest of Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher, posed for Vogue and had Vanity Fair do a feature on his skincare routine. CNN’s Brian Stelter told Avenatti he took him seriously as a potential 2020 presidential candidate, and MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace said people would be “foolish” to underestimate him as a politician.
But less than a year after saying Trump wouldn’t finish out his first term, Avenatti was only in the headlines after that for his own misdeeds. Now with time to reflect, the disgraced lawyer said he can’t “generalize” but addressed what he viewed were issues with media motives.
“I think certain members of the media were interested in only utilizing us for a purpose, and other people were interested in vetting the claims,” he said. “But let’s just be very clear. No one was interviewed in 2018 on television in the United States more than I was … And the reason I was on television is because I know how to communicate with people, and I was good on television. And if I didn’t know how to communicate with people, and I wasn’t good on television, I wouldn’t have been put on television.”
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Asked to name individual media members he thought only wanted him on to fit an anti-Trump narrative, he demurred.
“I’m not going to bash members of the media by name,” he told Fox News Digital.
Now, Avenatti is opining on the ongoing New York v. Trump trial, sharing thoughts on what he views as a politically motivated prosecution and the lack of credibility of both his former client Daniels and star witness Michael Cohen. The case revolves around an accusation that Trump improperly reimbursed Cohen — his former fixer — for a $130,000 payoff in 2016 to Daniels to stay silent about an alleged affair with Trump, which the former president denies.
Adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, speaks to media along with lawyer Michael Avenatti (R) outside federal court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 16, 2018. The two have since turned against one another, and Avenatti was later convicted of stealing $300,000 from her book advance. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)
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Liberal media outlets have raised their eyebrows at Avenatti’s recent interviews, with some saying he’s fishing for a pardon from Trump, who he sympathizes with after once being his staunchest foe.
Avenatti wouldn’t address his own individual cases except to admit to “mistakes,” while his former clients and victims call him a fraud and a liar.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve done a tremendous amount of good work,” Avenatti said, pointing to his long litigation career before 2018. “Like I said previously, of course I made some mistakes. Of course I lacked judgment in certain instances along the way. I’m far from perfect. Let me put it this way. I’m not as great as a lot of people made me out to be in 2018. And I frankly never claimed that I was, but I’m sure as hell not as terrible as some people make me out to be today.”
Avenatti’s victims aren’t pleased to see him in any sort of media spotlight.
“He’s a crook, he’s a criminal, and he doesn’t deserve it,” former Avenatti client Greg Barela, who testified against him in a California fraud case, told The Daily Beast.
David Rutz is a senior editor at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @davidrutz.
