Attorney Michael Avenatti charged with multiple financial crimes including a scheme to blackmail Nike.

Michael Avenatti. ABC News.

Attorney Michael Avenatti has been charged with multiple financial crimes including a scheme to blackmail Nike as well as bank and wire fraud. ABC News. Avenatti came to prominence by representing Stormy Daniels, a former porn star who signed a non-disclosure agreement with President Trump. Avenatti used the notability he gained from that case to consider a run for President as a Democrat. However, Federal prosecutors have charged and arrested Avenatti for attempting to extort $20 million from Nike. Avenatti said he would knock $10 billion dollars off of Nike's market cap by releasing damaging information about the company if his demands weren't met. Supposedly, the information concerned a major high school and college basketball scandal. Nike is cooperating with federal authorities on that case. Avenatti was also charged for defrauding a bank and using his clients money to pay for personal expenses. 

My Comment:

What an absolute idiot Avenatti is. I can't think of a worse idea than trying to blackmail a huge company like Nike and he is lucky that he is only getting arrested for this. These huge companies don't mess around and it's entirely possible that the consequences for this action could have been much worse. 

Furthermore, Nike doesn't really care that much about image. I mean, they threw away me as a customer when they signed Colin Kaepernick, and it didn't seem to hurt their long term bottom line. The people that still buy Nike products aren't going to give up the brand just because of some stupid basketball scandal. 

And that's especially true now. Whatever Nike did or didn't do with the basketball scandal, the public is going to be on their side now. People hate blackmailers and that's what Avenatti did to Nike. Whatever they did it's probably a lot less disgusting than blackmail. And credit where credit is due, they did the right thing when they went to the feds. Paying off blackmailers is a sucker's game and is usually worse for you than just letting the information come out. 

Of course it's not that surprising that Avenatti tried to blackmail someone. Indeed, that's pretty much what the whole Stormy Daniels fiasco was all about. She wanted to go public so she could gain financially even though she signed a non-disclosure agreement. She wanted to gain more money, either from President Trump or from the news media and Avenatti was there to help her. 

Avenatti was a pretty terrible attorney for Daniels as it's very possible that she was one of the clients that had her money stolen. I don't know that for sure, and the charges in the LA case aren't related to Daniels, but I do know that Avenatti doesn't represent her anymore and that he filed a defamation case against President Trump without her permission. 

It's been a major fall from grace for Avenatti. He had been considered a long shot candidate for President at one point but that seems like a lifetime ago. That dream ended when he was involved in a domestic violence scandal that ended with no charges. These charges now is the final nail in Avenatti's political ambitions as he will have to be very lucky to avoid a long prison sentence. 

It's been a nice couple of days for fans of President Trump. In addition to one of President Trump's more annoying enemies getting charged for blackmail, he was also vindicated by the Mueller report. It's been very positive around here and I, for one, am happy about it.