Avenatti trial: Stormy Daniels seeks to block ‘irrelevant’ questions as former lawyer drops defence team
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Michael Avenatti has been granted permission to represent himself at his own trial in Manhattan, setting the stage for him to directly confront his former client Stormy Daniels if and when she takes the stand.
As he left the courthouse on Tuesday, Avenatti said he felt comfortable representing himself. “I’m a trial lawyer. It’s what I’ve done for two decades. It’s my arena,” he said.
Avenatti, a California lawyer, is accused of stealing $300,000 of the money Daniels was owed for her autobiography. He is also charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Avenatti became well known nationally in 2018 as he represented Daniels in lawsuits against Donald Trump. He was briefly something of a hero for many anti-Trumpers, but come 2020 he began a spectacular fall from grace that saw him sentenced to jail for trying to extort Nike out of millions of dollars.
When Michael Avenatti considered running for president
Before his reputation crashed and burned in legal disaster, Michael Avenatti was a hero for anti-Trumpers everywhere – and some of them even thought he could’ve been a credible presidential candidate in 2020. He ultimately decided not to run, wisely as it turned out, but here’s a flashback to a very different time in his career...
What Stormy Daniels has written about Donald Trump
The case against Mr Avenatti centres on accusations he took $300,000 that Ms Daniels earned from Full Disclosure, a memoir she published in the fall of 2018. In that book, she gave an extremely detailed account of her encounters with the then-president – a description that The Independent’s Andrew Griffin described as “a variety of shocking, bizarre – and mostly unverifiable – claims”:
Trump's bizarre comments about Ivanka aren't even the weirdest bit of the Stormy Daniels book
Trump's famous comments about Ivanka after being hit on the backside with his own face are not even the most bizarre claim from the book
Daniels tries to block “irrelevant” questions from Avenatti that could lead to “unfair prejudice"
The US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York last night wrote to the judge overseeing the Avenatti trial to request that the defendant be stopped from asking about various other matters in Ms Daniels’s life, including her past legal representation, payment of back taxes and child support, and various cases in which Avenatti represented her.
The letter is a sign that the prosecution expect Avenatti to fight hard as he defends himself. Specifically, it requests:
“...that the Court preclude certain Defense Exhibits and cross-examination of Stephanie Clifford, a/k/a “Stormy Daniels,” on particular topics because they are irrelevant and their probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, and wasting time.”
Read the document here.
Wrapping up
We’ll return for live coverage of the Avenatti trial as events develop. Stay tuned.
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