Avenatti Jury Hears ‘What Extortion Sounds Like’ at Trial’s End
Avenatti Jury Hears Closing Arguments in Nike Extortion Trial
(Bloomberg) -- A federal jury in New York will likely begin deliberations Wednesday in the trial of celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, who’s accused of trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike Inc. and defrauding a client in the process.
In their closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors re-played a recording of a March meeting between Avenatti, 48, and Nike lawyers in which he threatened to hold a press conference revealing claims that the company paid bribes to top high school basketball players unless it hired him to conduct an internal probe for as much as $25 million.
“That is what extortion sounds like,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky told the jury of six men and six women in federal court in Manhattan. “That is Michael Avenatti telling Nike lawyers that Nike has to pay him. Why? Because if they don’t he is going to make it hurt.”
Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers made their final pitches following a trial that spanned almost two weeks and featured testimony from Nike’s lawyers and Avenatti’s former client, youth basketball coach Gary Franklin.
Avenatti, who shot to fame representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, claims his actions were legitimate negotiating positions taken on behalf of his client. He has also argued that the case is politically motivated, and that Nike cooked up the extortion claim to curry favor with prosecutors probing its alleged payments to players.
In his closing statement, Avenatti’s lawyer Scott Srebnick tried to focus the jury on Nike’s alleged wrongdoing and argued that Avenatti was trying to get justice for Franklin by rooting out corruption at the Beaverton, Oregon-based company, which has denied the allegations.
Franklin hired Avenatti “to clean up elite basketball and find out how high up the corruption goes,” Srebnick said. “They wanted to aim heavy artillery at Nike.”
Srebnick reminded the jury of text messages and emails between Franklin and an adviser that the defense says contradicts the government’s claim that Franklin wanted to keep the allegations private and didn’t want Avenatti to investigate. In the messages they said they wanted to “go after Nike” and “expose misconduct,” Srebnick said.
The entire defense case lasted about 30 minutes on Tuesday after U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe rejected much of the evidence Avenatti sought to put forth as irrelevant. Avenatti had tried to force testimony from Nike executives and to show that he approached negotiations with Nike’s lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP warily because he believed the law firm worked for scandal-plagued blood-testing startup Theranos Inc. despite a conflict of interest.
“Even assuming Boies Schiller had a conflict of interest in regard to Theranos,” Gardephe said, “that fact would not make it more or less likely that Mr. Avenatti” committed the crimes of which he’s accused.
The case is U.S. v. Avenatti, 19-cr-373, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Steve Stroth
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