Source: Politics<\/p>\n
VENICE, Calif. \u2014 Inside a two-bedroom apartment, 11 blocks from the ocean, there is a man in free fall, though he has nowhere to go. He wears a monitor on his right ankle, government-issued, blinking green beneath his tapered track pants. He doesn\u2019t leave, except for court appearances and medical appointments. He makes calls on a red flip phone, designed for seniors by a company called Jitterbug: big buttons, no internet, cell service from Cricket Wireless. His old iPhone \u2014 the one where he handled his TV bookings, tapped out tweets and called reporters, wresting each story into the version he wanted, with charm, with pure aggression, with whatever the day required \u2014 now goes straight to voicemail. Maybe you had his number. Back then, for a while at least, who didn\u2019t?<\/p>\n
Behind a tall fence in the backyard, he can hear the lilt of brunches on Rose Avenue, laughter and music. There\u2019s an ice cream parlor he likes on the corner, 482 feet away, but to get delivery, as with anything requiring internet access, the order must come from his roommate Jay Manheimer, the childhood friend from St. Louis who took him in almost two years ago when he was released on home confinement. The apartment sits beneath the flight path to the Santa Monica terminal where he used to fly jets. Engines roar overhead. The last time he flew private, in January 2020, he was shackled. Federal marshals chartered a plane to take him to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, where he spent 74 days in solitary confinement, in the high-security cell once occupied by El Chapo, one level above the unit where Jeffrey Epstein was held.<\/p>\n
The last time he drove a race car, his most beloved and expensive habit, was 1,411 days ago. The last time he had a Grey Goose martini (up, two olives) and a New York strip at Craig\u2019s, his preferred hangout in West Hollywood, was 709 days ago. The last time he wore his five-figure Patek Philippe Nautilus watch, before it was seized by the government, was 708 days ago. The last time he talked to his former client, Stormy Daniels, was February 2019. The last time a reporter asked him about running for president was March 24, 2019, the Sunday before his arrest. The last time he saw his parents was Thanksgiving 2019. His Twitter account, where he once held the attention of nearly 900,000 followers (now 680,000), sits frozen in September 2018: In the video that plays on loop in his last pinned tweet, he is on MSNBC, attacking the president and his party: \u201cThey want to make me the issue.\u201d He\u2019s staring into the camera, eyes level, talking fast. \u201cI noticed earlier tonight, in fact, Don Jr. got in the mix by calling me a \u2018porn star lawyer.\u2019 Evidently he forgot that his father was the one that had unprotected sex with my \u2018quote\u2019 porn-star \u2018close-quote\u2019 client while his stepbrother was four months old at home with his stepmom.\u201d<\/p>\n
This Michael Avenatti doesn\u2019t exist anymore.<\/p>\n
That much is evident when you sit across from him in this small backyard, miles from the nearest green room. I spent several days this fall interviewing Avenatti about his role in a national moment \u2014 nine months in front of the camera \u2014 that feels as distant as it does unresolved. From March to December 2018, Michael Avenatti was a central figure in the most important political story in America: the fate of Donald Trump\u2019s presidency. He was an unlikely resistance hero, maybe the first. His credentials were pure hot celebrity and a willingness to get in the mud and fight, filling a vacuum in the Democratic Party at a time when people were still afraid to use the words \u201cliar\u201d and \u201clies.\u201d He was, by some unspoken consensus, serious enough to merit the platform. The words \u201cpotential Avenatti presidential run\u201d were not a joke. In a world where the president established a zero-sum style of civic discourse, a talent for public combat was seen as its own justification. It propelled Avenatti, and it can be argued it also undid him. Almost as quickly as Avenatti arrived, he disappeared, undone by scandal, his enemy still in the White House. The only question left is whether the \u201ccage fight\u201d mentality he embraced so willingly \u2014 the thing that made him famous \u2014 will be what saves him from prison and obscurity.<\/p>\n
To ask Michael Avenatti to explain what happened is both vivid and vexing. The details of the last three years come easily \u2014 dates, names, locations, tweets, dinners, his thoughts at the time. It\u2019s the big picture that causes difficulty, and certain topics in particular: why he put himself on the nation\u2019s largest stage, when he owed millions in taxes, according to federal prosecutors; when he had financial disputes with his former law partner; when his house (in the most general terms) was not in order, despite assuring informal advisers, two of them told me, that he had no skeletons in his closet. \u201cNot a goddamn thing,\u201d two people remember him saying at dinner in 2018, though he disputes \u201cany suggestion that I led anyone to believe that I led a pristine life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Avenatti is now a convicted felon, found guilty<\/a> of attempting to extort Nike in a scheme the government describes as a desperate shakedown. He is facing two and a half years in prison, pending his appeal. He is juggling three federal indictments, claims of fraud, embezzlement, and attempted extortion, the details of which he commands as if he were representing himself, which he did in the second of the three cases, in California, where federal prosecutors accused him<\/a> of stealing millions of dollars from his own clients. Remarkably, the case ended in a mistrial after Avenatti successfully argued that federal prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to his defense. He spends his days now filing legal briefs, motions, appeals, letters to the court(s), and reviewing evidence. The second-floor apartment is filled with boxes of files labeled things like \u201cCONTEMPT MOTION,\u201d though they could very well say \u201cBULLSHIT\u201d \u2014 boxes and boxes of \u201cIt\u2019s Bullshit\u201d and \u201cI Don\u2019t Traffic In Bullshit\u201d and \u201cThe Whole Premise Is Complete Bullshit\u201d \u2014 which is generally where he lands on the case against him, both legally and in the public eye.<\/p>\n His main contention, his genuine belief, is that he would never have been pursued by federal prosecutors in three separate cases, on two coasts, held in solitary confinement alongside suspected terrorists and national security threats, if his name were not Michael Avenatti.<\/p>\n This is not to say that he doesn\u2019t admit to mistakes \u2014 he does. But these regrets are often punctuated by his own preoccupations and obsessions, some of them significant, some of them seemingly irrelevant: The way his partner in the Nike negotiations, a prominent criminal defense attorney, never faced charges. The way Andrew Yang keeps mocking Avenatti\u2019s performance at an Iowa Democratic Party dinner that happened three years ago. The way Stormy Daniels, the central figure in the third federal case against him, in which prosecutors say he stole some of the proceeds from her book deal, now works as a paranormal private investigator, which his lawyers say undermines her credibility. And finally, the way Michael Cohen, Trump\u2019s former lawyer, served his own house arrest in his \u201cmultimillion-dollar luxury apartment,\u201d Avenatti says, \u201cwith his Mir\u00f3 f—ing painting on the wall behind him when he does his YouTube interviews and his cable TV hits.\u201d<\/p>\n When I suggest to Avenatti that he could do his own live hits, launch his own podcast, reconnect with his friends at MSNBC and CNN \u2014 his old dinner partners in New York \u2014 he stops me.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it would be smart. I don\u2019t think it\u2019d be a good look, and, you know, why risk it?\u201d To hear other people bring up his name without being on set to challenge them, to yell like he used to \u2014 \u201cit\u2019s not killing me,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it\u2019s \u2014 it\u2019s infuriating.\u201d<\/p>\n Avenatti always performed best with others watching, and no one has been watching for a very long time. He has endless days and weeks to think about the downward trajectory of his life, which he doesn\u2019t like to do when he is alone, which, inconveniently, is most of the time. \u201cIf I start thinking about the relationships I had that I no longer have, the opportunities I had that I no longer have, the freedom I had that I no longer have, the wealth and things I used to have that I no longer have, the notoriety and the adoration I used to have that I no longer have \u2014 I mean, it\u2019ll destroy me,\u201d he says. \u201cI have to push it out of my mind, because it\u2019s been such a gargantuan fall.\u201d<\/p>\n Avenatti is fighting for the most basic reason a person could have, which is his freedom. But there is a more ineffable struggle going on inside the Venice apartment \u2014 one to preserve a sense that he mattered, not as a cartoonish figure in our political circus, but as a player of substance who cannot be dismissed. He helped create the binary media environment of the Trump era \u2014 but as he falls, eyeing the uncertain landing ahead, he is now desperate to be seen as a figure of complexity, to establish a public perception that will withstand the impact.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not a Boy Scout, and I am not a serial killer,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s easier for us when it comes to judging other human beings, to say, \u2018He or she is 100 percent good, or he or she is 100 percent bad.\u2019 Right? Because that makes it easy.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t hard to get in touch with him again.<\/p>\n A friend reached out to another friend, and within minutes, he called me from his Jitterbug. \u201cThe last time we talked I was deciding whether to base my presidential campaign in St. Louis or Los Angeles,\u201d he said as soon as I picked up. This was a joke, and not exactly true: The last time we\u2019d spoken was in the fall of 2018, when things were starting to go bad. But Avenatti was doing what he always did with a reporter on the other line \u2014 massaging, doling out bits of color, inserting himself not just into the writer\u2019s story, but the making of it.<\/p>\n He\u2019s done it so many times before. Even in the beginning, when he was a little-known plaintiff\u2019s attorney in California, before his license was suspended, he had cases appear on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d three times in five years. \u201cIt\u2019s never been done,\u201d he says. In front of a camera, he is at ease. In 2016, during his second appearance on the program, representing hospitals that claimed they\u2019d been sold ineffective personal protective equipment, when asked to respond to one of the health care executives, he surprised himself with an ad-libbed line: \u201cEvidently he forgot the 11th commandment,\u201d Avenatti told Anderson Cooper. \u201cDo not lie to \u201860 Minutes.\u2019\u201d As soon as he said it, he knew it would make the final cut.<\/p>\n A week after we first spoke in September, Avenatti stood waiting for me outside the second-floor apartment in Venice. He looked smaller in person, though he still stands just under six feet tall. He still talks close to your face. He still has veins on his temples that ripple with intensity. This was the favorite detail of the writers who profiled him in 2018 \u2014 a suggestion of the \u201ccage fight\u201d he promised against Donald Trump. He knows how they would write the detail today: defensive, bitter, defiant. Sitting in the small backyard of Manheimer\u2019s apartment, he can be all those things at points, but also charming and plainly smart. As soon as we sit down, he shifts easily back into the mode of a trial attorney, every audience a jury with a checkbook.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can have what you perceive to be the greatest fact in the world, and if it\u2019s not gonna resonate, then it\u2019s worthless,\u201d he says. When he got into the public arena, it was the same: \u201cAll I was doing was speaking to another jury. Instead of 12 people, it was millions.\u201d At other times he compares it to racing cars, introducing a level of danger to the routine act of persuasion. \u201cIf you\u2019re good, you don\u2019t just go barreling into the corner and hope you make the corner, right? If you are on the edge of the envelope, you\u2019re taking in all these sensory moments around you. You\u2019re putting 100 inputs into the steering wheel, the throttle \u2014 constantly looking ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n And so it was that Avenatti who came down around the track in March of 2018, hoping he\u2019d make it.<\/p>\n In the beginning, at least, when he agreed to represent Stormy Daniels, it went well. \u201cIt could not have gone better, frankly,\u201d Avenatti says. \u201cI would love to see anyone do better. Hundreds, thousands of decisions went into this thing along the way. And we also had a lot of good luck. But this wasn\u2019t just some f—ing accident that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2018, he refused to tell the story of how he and Daniels met, so much so that writers started describing it as \u201ca secret.\u201d He did this, he says, because of (1) attorney-client privilege, and (2) control. \u201cI didn\u2019t want the focus to be on anything other than what I wanted the focus to be on in 2018,\u201d he says. But when he told me the story in Venice this fall, it was clear that their relationship did contain an element of chance. Avenatti only met Daniels, in February 2018, because another lawyer passed on the case. Just before the 2016 presidential election, Daniels had taken a $130,000 payment from Michael Cohen, Trump\u2019s lawyer, to stay quiet about sleeping with Trump in 2006. Now she wanted out of the NDA, upset that Cohen was talking about the agreement in an effort to deny the affair. Avenatti told her they had something bigger on their hands than a simple NDA dispute. He agreed to represent her, immediately taking control of her media strategy. Daniels had been in on a \u201cMake America Horny Again\u201d tour across the country, and was in talks with the Lifetime channel to do a five-part series, Avenatti says. He told her to pull out of everything: \u201cYou need to do a solid interview for free, and that\u2019s how you need to tell your story in order to push the reset button,\u201d he remembers saying. \u201cSuburban housewives in middle America aren\u2019t going to identify with the \u2018Make America Horny Again\u2019 girl.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIdeally, you need to go on \u201860 Minutes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n On March 6, he filed the first lawsuit on behalf of Daniels, alleging the hush-money payment constituted a campaign violation. You could see the Avenatti fandom develop in real-time. As he walked away from the mics after a press conference in New York, a woman screamed: \u201cGOD WILL PROTECT YOU, MICHAEL!\u201d Less than three weeks later, \u201c60 Minutes\u201d aired their interview with Daniels and Avenatti. Twenty-two million people watched.<\/p>\n In April, he was invited to a \u201ctop 100\u201d media event in New York at the Seagram Building. Gayle King was there, he says, Don Lemon, Anthony Scaramucci, Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity (\u201che was very complimentary towards me, actually\u201d) \u2014 all of them new \u201cfriends.\u201d Martha Stewart came running up to him to ask for a picture. \u201cYou\u2019re going to be our savior,\u201d he remembers Stewart saying. (A spokesperson for Stewart did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very heady at the time,\u201d Avenatti says.<\/p>\n It is worth pausing here to remember this exact moment, just over a year into Trump\u2019s presidency, with Democrats out of power in both chambers of Congress, the Mueller investigation carrying on out of view. There was so much energy in the party \u2014 and it poured daily into a vacuum. Obama was gone. No one wanted to hear from Hillary. The leaders in the party were \u2014 who? Tom Perez, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi. Democrats frequently miscalculated: On the day of the women\u2019s march in January 2017, the party\u2019s leading strategists weren\u2019t in Washington, shoulder-to-shoulder with tens of thousands of enraged voters. They were at a donor summit at a Florida resort instead. By the time Avenatti came on the scene, impeachment talk was still fringe. Democrats couldn\u2019t decide whether they would call him a liar on TV.<\/p>\n Avenatti appeared to be an answer to the problem for Democrats who feared their leaders weren\u2019t fighting on Trump\u2019s terms. If part of Trump\u2019s attraction to his supporters was that he said what they were thinking, Avenatti performed a similar function for Democrats. He had in his hands a case that not only validated their instincts about the character and quality of Donald Trump, but seemed to promise more bombshells to come. People saw him as a vessel for their animus; they sent him information.<\/p>\n It was only a few weeks before the Daniels case started to grow into something bigger \u2014 not for his client, who only did a fraction of the appearances he did, but for Avenatti himself. He welcomed the attention, becoming a regular on cable news, once hitting five networks in a single day. On Facebook, a \u201cHottie Avenatti\u201d page appeared. Before attending night classes at George Washington University Law School, Avenatti had spent six years working on Democratic campaigns in opposition research, and he now had an audience for his commentary on the party\u2019s failings. \u201cOff topic,\u201d he wrote on Twitter that June, \u201cthe candidate in 2020 better be a take no prisoners street fighter who is prepared to go 15 rounds in a VERY brutal campaign.\u201d The tweet spun into stories about \u201cAvenatti 2020.\u201d If reporters believed they were in on the joke, Avenatti wasn\u2019t. The more he went places other Democrats wouldn\u2019t, the more the coverage bent in his direction. He seemed to prove his own premise.<\/p>\n At the \u201ctop 100\u201d media event that spring, he remembers standing at the bar with MSNBC host Ari Melber, another new friend. As people came up to Avenatti, Melber leaned over and said, \u201cYou\u2019re the belle of the ball.\u201d An MSNBC spokesperson confirmed the exchange.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d Avenatti replied.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to look back some day and say, \u2018This was the peak. It was all downhill from here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, the \u201cpeak\u201d came later, in August 2018.<\/p>\n By this time, the adviser had his own advisers \u2014 a small group of informal political operatives helping him think about running for president. He had his own super PAC, formed under the name \u201cFight PAC,\u201d which took in more than $100,000, about a third of which went directly to Avenatti for reimbursements, according to election filings<\/a>. He visited Youngstown, Ohio, on his own sort of listening tour. He appeared at more than 20 political events, not as Daniels\u2019 lawyer, but as a possible presidential candidate. He came unannounced to the Democratic Party\u2019s annual summer meeting in Chicago \u2014 it was never clear exactly for what purpose \u2014 and reporters swarmed. He had meetings with operatives like Rahm Emanuel, his colleague from the old days in opposition research. Emanuel walked into the meeting, sat down at a conference table, and before a \u201chello,\u201d snapped, \u201cYou\u2019re not f—ing running for president,\u201d according to Avenatti. The two parried back and forth. \u201cI said, \u2018OK, then you tell me who you think is going to beat this guy, and if you can make a case for them, then I agree with you, I\u2019m not going to run.\u2019\u201d Later that summer, Avenatti appeared as the headliner at his first major Democratic Party event, the Wing Ding dinner, held every presidential season in an Iowa town called Clear Lake.<\/p>\n Reporters rolled their eyes, he says. \u201cThey all kind of have this attitude of, \u2018So, uh, Michael, like, what are you doing here? Isn\u2019t this a publicity stunt?\u2019\u201d That night on stage, he told Democrats they needed to \u201cfight fire with fire,\u201d playing off Michelle Obama\u2019s line at the Democratic convention two years earlier: \u201cWhen they go low, I say, we hit harder,\u201d Avenatti said. The crowd gave him multiple standing ovations. (\u201cAs I remember, there were five.\u201d) Through his eyes, the reporters in the press gallery looked ashen. \u201cI will say this is one of the highlights of my life,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was so f—ing great seeing the look on all of these reporters\u2019 faces.\u201d Afterward, Avenatti says he finished off a bottle of Fireball with Tim Ryan, the Ohio congressman, at a house party in Clear Lake. (A spokesperson for Ryan did not respond to a request to confirm the incident.)<\/p>\n If he could stop time anywhere, it would be at the Wing Ding. He doesn\u2019t believe he would have made the best president, but he could have been a great candidate, he says. \u201cThat was really when I thought to myself, \u2018I\u2019m pretty decent at this. Give me six months, and I\u2019ll be f—ing great.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t have six months, as it turned out. He barely had four.<\/p>\n The signs were there: He was in a lengthy dispute with his former law partner. Journalists wrote about his failed venture as the owner of Tully\u2019s Coffee, the Seattle-based company he purchased in 2013, working alongside the actor Patrick Dempsey. As he headlined political events in the summer of 2018 he talked to at least one friend, that person told me, about how he needed money. He had multiple race cars, a private jet, an expensive divorce from his second wife, a $13.5 million house on the water in Newport Beach, an apartment in Ten Thousand, the West Hollywood apartment complex popular with celebrities. Avenatti denies that he was living above his means at the time. \u201cI was not desperate for money anytime in the fall of 2018,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He was combative in public, and people liked that. But he wasn\u2019t just fighting Trump. He started arguments on Twitter with random users, with reporters, with other Democratic operatives. He was the kind of subject who \u201ccan be extremely aggressive in pushing back,\u201d Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Finnegan said on a podcast after Avenatti\u2019s arrest. He could \u201coscillate between charming and aggressive,\u201d another reporter told me. \u201cHe wants to manage the story.\u201d Later, in a Vanity Fair piece in May 2019, cable news bookers would complain he was aggressive and rude. This is another preoccupation of Avenatti\u2019s. He says he prided himself on his good relationships with bookers. \u201cI never became a diva. I never thought I was better than other people. I wasn\u2019t rude to people.\u201d If he had been, he says, they wouldn\u2019t have invited him back again and again.<\/p>\n Around that time, two political advisers told him that the next step in any serious presidential campaign would be a self-vetting process. On at least two separate occasions, they recalled, he promised them he had nothing to hide. One time was at a small dinner in 2018 in Washington, where a member of the party told me they remember asking Avenatti if he had had any \u201cskeletons in his closet.\u201d Avenatti, the person told me, looked around the room, took a \u201cpregnant pause\u201d and said, \u201cNope, not a goddamn thing.\u201d Avenatti denied he ever told people that he was \u201cas pure as the driven snow.\u201d He says the only time he can remember someone asking him a question about \u201cskeletons in his closet\u201d was in October 2018, at a Vanity Fair event with the writer Emily Jane Fox. \u201cI think everyone\u2019s got some baby skeletons rolling around under the floorboards,\u201d he told her. In an August appearance on ABC News, he promised<\/a> to release his tax returns. At the time, according to federal prosecutors, he owed millions to the IRS.<\/p>\n On one trip to Florida, after an appearance at a Democratic Party dinner, one former adviser said, he bought drinks for everyone at the hotel bar, charging the bill to his room. A few days later, the former adviser got a call from the hotel saying the credit card on file had been declined. The bill was for a couple thousand dollars. The former adviser ate the charges. (Avenatti says he doesn\u2019t remember the incident, \u201cbecause it never happened.\u201d)<\/p>\n Christine Carlin, Avenatti\u2019s first wife and the mother of his two daughters, said her ex-husband could be loose with particulars. \u201cI worried sometimes that he was always a bigger-picture person,\u201d she told me. \u201cHe was just off doing the big things. And I don\u2019t know if he kept his eyes on the little things as much as he should have.\u201d<\/p>\n What came next happened quickly. In September, Democrats accused him of damaging their case against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was contending with allegations he had sexually assaulted a woman in high school. A new client of Avenatti\u2019s, Julie Swetnick, said she had witnessed Kavanaugh and his friend getting girls drunk \u201cso they could be gang raped.\u201d She later contradicted parts of her account in an interview with NBC News, giving conservatives ammunition to disparage the accusations against Kavanaugh as a smear campaign. (\u201cI deserve no blame for what happened in connection with Kavanaugh. Period,\u201d Avenatti says now.)<\/p>\n In November, he was arrested by police on suspicion of domestic violence in an incident with his ex-girlfriend, who accused him in a Vanity Fair<\/a> report of verbal, psychological, and physical abuse. \u201cHe has two extremely different personalities,\u201d she told the magazine. Avenatti denies he has ever been violent. No charges were ever filed by prosecutors in connection with the arrest.<\/p>\n In November, his relationship with Stormy Daniels was starting to unravel in public view: She claimed that the defamation case Avenatti had filed that summer against Donald Trump had been brought without her approval. \u201cMichael has not treated me with the respect and deference an attorney should show to a client,\u201d she told the Daily Beast. (Daniels later pursued the case to the Supreme Court with new counsel.) Weeks earlier, Daniels had defended Avenatti and his political aspirations in an interview with CNN\u2019s Don Lemon. Yes, people were sending her messages about all the attention he was getting \u2014 \u201cthey think that Michael has abandoned me, or I\u2019m not important to him anymore,\u201d she told Lemon \u2014 but they still spoke every day, she said. \u201cHe always puts me first.\u201d In early December, Daniels said she and her lawyer had \u201csorted shit out.\u201d<\/p>\n By February 2019, he was no longer representing her. (Avenatti provided a copy of the termination letter he sent Daniels late that month, citing a \u201clack of communication\u201d and a \u201cgeneral lack of appreciation for our work.\u201d)<\/p>\n At the time, federal prosecutors in California were already investigating allegations that Avenatti had stolen from clients. \u201cIn the back of my mind, was I thinking: \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve stolen millions of dollars from people, and that\u2019s gonna come to light?\u2019 No. Because I haven\u2019t stolen millions of dollars from people,\u201d he says. He won\u2019t discuss the details of the California case beyond saying he should have exercised better judgment. He has had years to think about this crisis point, and he has concluded that he was na\u00efve \u2014 not necessarily about his own actions, or the way he handled his business, but rather about the consequences he would come to bear as a result.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course I made mistakes \u2014 you don\u2019t end up in this situation without making mistakes. Whether those mistakes should put me where I am now is a different story,\u201d he says. \u201cI haven\u2019t been na\u00efve in a long, long time, but I was na\u00efve about this.\u201d<\/p>\n In the spring of 2019, he hastily took on the case of Gary Franklin, a coach who alleged he had evidence of a big problem at Nike: the company, in partnership with Franklin, was paying parents of recruits. Avenatti teamed up with Mark Geragos, a criminal defense attorney who had worked with Nike before, to negotiate a settlement, including a pitch for the two lawyers to lead a well-funded internal investigation to clean up the problem \u201cbecause we didn\u2019t trust Nike and its outside law firm Boies Schiller to do it properly or ethically,\u201d Avenatti says.<\/p>\n