Stormy Daniels' former lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is set to appear in court for allegedly defrauding her out of $300,000.
Former adult star Daniels shot to mainstream fame when she was embroiled in a legal battle against then-President of the United States Donald Trump.
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With Avenatti's help, she sued Trump in order to secure a release from a non-disclosure agreement she had signed over an alleged affair she had with him. Trump, however, denies any such affair took place.
Now, Daniels is heading back to court, but this time it's to give testimony because Avenatti allegedly cheated her out of around $300,000 in proceeds from her book.
Per AP, federal prosecutors in New York City accuse Avenatti of using a doctored document to divert around $300,000 that Daniels was supposed to receive in a book deal, for his own personal and business expenses.
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They will be seeking to prove that the lawyer engaged in wire fraud and aggravated identity theft to prevent hundreds of thousands of dollars, sent to him by Daniels' publisher, from reaching her.
The trial begins tomorrow, January 24, and Daniels will be expected to testify before judge and jury by Tuesday at the earliest.
Daniels and Avenatti were close enough in 2018 that he wrote the foreword to her book Full Disclosure, but in 2019 he was charged with a trio of criminal cases, including the fraud charge laid against him.
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Avenatti has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and is facing what will be his third criminal trial as a defendant in the past two years.
He was convicted in early 2020 of trying to extort up to $25 million out of sportswear giant Nike by threatening to tarnish its reputation, and was handed a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, which he is yet to carry out.
In 2021, there was a mistrial on charges that Avenatti cheated clients in California, and he is still awaiting a retrial.
Following his arrest for the alleged fraud, Avenatti took to Twitter to insist no money was ever misappropriated or mishandled and he was looking 'forward to a jury hearing the evidence'.
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Topics: US News
Joe Harker