No words can do justice to the excitement I feel at the thought of an ugly Stormy/Avenatti legal brawl.
But it looks like I might have to come up with some. It’s happening. I think.
Yesterday’s Avenatti statement announcing their split seemed oddly hostile to me. Sounds like it seemed that way to Daniels too, according to what she told an audience in D.C. last night.
Stormy Daniels called it “adorable” that ex-lawyer Michael Avenatti said he fired her during a speech to women at a private DC social club on Tuesday night.
“He knew that I was unhappy and looking for new counsel,” she told hundreds of women at The Wing, a private social club…
Touting her new lawyer, Clark Brewster, she said, “Sit tight ladies, it’s about to get real f—ing good,” hinting at fresh legal action.
A little more from NBC’s account of the same event:
“I have a new attorney,” she said, referring to Clark Brewster. “The details will be coming out very soon. And … my new attorney, you know, said today, ‘Things about to get real interesting.'”…
“Michael knew that I was very dissatisfied with a few things that — it pains me to not be able to share it,” she said.
Why can’t Stormy share it? Confidentiality is something a lawyer owes his client, not vice versa. And it’s not like she’s been shy about publicly accusing Avenatti of wrongdoing before.
Maybe she’s afraid that if she waives the privilege by sharing confidential conversations then Avenatti will start spilling too. Or perhaps she’s preparing to sue the pants off of him and doesn’t want to tip him to any claims that will be alleged in her suit.
I’ve looked around online for hints in the form of leaks to the media about what she might be up to, with no luck. Although here was an interesting aside from last night:
.@StormyDaniels hints at her split with @MichaelAvenatti saying "her lawyer" wanted the NDA to be deemed illegal so he could use that to depose the president. "That was his agenda." She said her goal was not to have to pay the $20m penalty.
"Even I can’t suck that much dick."
— Nikki Schwab (@NikkiSchwab) March 13, 2019
Remember that Stormy accused Avenatti in November of suing Trump for defamation in her name without her permission. She lost that suit and is momentarily on the hook for upwards of $300,000 in attorneys’ fees. Her reference to Avenatti’s “agenda” might be another piece of that, a potential motive for why he allegedly filed that suit without her approval. It’d be grossly unethical for a lawyer to sue someone on his client’s behalf without authorization, needless to say. And it’d be grossly unethical to do so for his own benefit — his “agenda” — rather than hers. The most basic rule of lawyering is that your job is to advance your client’s interests, not your own.
Which reminds me: Did we ever find out who was paying him to represent Stormy? Waaaay back in April last year, when the Stormy/Avenatti partnership was in its heyday, an antagonist asked her about that on Twitter and received this reply.
Except I'm not paying him. Haha!
— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) April 26, 2018
Avenatti has insisted that all of his fees in the matter were paid by Daniels and the online crowdfunding webpage the two set up as they pursued Trump and Cohen. Righties have speculated since the beginning, though, that left-wing outfits were secretly funding him as a way to torment Trump — and it certainly would be in the interest of those outlets to have Avenatti depose the president at some point. Of course, it also would have been in Avenatti’s professional interest as a media whore and (at the time) aspiring presidential candidate to depose Trump so there’s no need to reach for a lefty conspiracy to explain why he had his own “agenda,” to borrow Daniels’s word. But if you’re wondering how the “Stormy vs. Avenatti” matter might get “real f***ing good,” disclosing the involvement of a heretofore unknown third-party funding their partnership would do it.
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