Michael Avenatti: Stormy Daniels' ex-lawyer sentenced to 14-yr prison for tax evasion and stealing $12M from clients

Former attorney Micahel Avenatti, who is already incarcerated, has been given a 14-year federal prison sentence. The attorney acknowledged to committing tax fraud and robbing his clients out of a total of $12 million. After defending porn star Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against former president Donald Trump, Avenatti rose to fame. A district court in Orange County ordered Avenatti to pay up to $8 million in restitution in addition to his sentence on December 5, according to the Daily Mail. Avenatti, who gained notoriety after attempting to assist Daniels in violating a confidentiality agreement pertaining to her alleged affair with Trump, is currently serving a five-year jail sentence for his role in the $20 million Nike extortion scam as well as for stealing from Daniels. As previously reported, on July 8, 2021, in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, Avenatti was given a 2.5-year jail term in the Nike extortion case. This was followed by a three-year period of supervised release. Avenatti, who has been given a 14-year prison sentence, revealed that he bought a private plane with some of the money he secretly stole from settlement funds handed to his clients, according to the Daily Mail. The government will now seize the private jet. According to Judge James V. Selna, his sentence will run concurrently with or on top of the five years that he is already serving. The former lawyer claimed that his clients had actually lost less money—only about $3.8 million. One of the people Avenatti deceived was a paraplegic with mental illness who was receiving disability. Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, who suffered from in-custody injuries and was rendered paraplegic after attempting suicide, reportedly said in a statement to the court that his experience with fraud left him heartbroken and made it difficult for him to trust people.  "To this day, I do not know why Michael lied and deceived me, why he broke my trust, why he broke my heart", he wrote. According to the Daily Mail, Avenatti argued for his new sentence to run concurrently with the punishment Selna was asked to impose in the fraud case, which resulted in a 17-and-a-half term sentence, and tried to reduce the sentence for his fraud case to six years. Avenatti elected to represent himself during the trial even though he lost his legal license. According to the Daily Mail, he wrote about himself in the third person in the writings and documents that were submitted to the court.  In a memo to the court judge, Avenatti wrote that "Defendant deserves just punishment for his crimes, including a prison sentence. He likewise deserves to lose his law license, his 22-year career, his assets, his countless personal and professional relationships, and his reputation, almost all of which have already been rightly taken from him."