Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, July 11, 2021
The sketchy lawyer who was elevated to hero status by Trump-hating media and Democrat politicians is going to jail.
Michael Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to 2½ years in prison for his attempt to extort $20 million out of Nike. He had been convicted after a jury trial in February 2020 on all three counts he faced: extortion, transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort, and wire fraud.
Avenatti’s also faces a litany of tax and bank charges in California with a trial set to begin this month in federal court in Santa Ana, California. A trial in New York is scheduled to start next year on federal charges that he embezzled money from porn star Stormy Daniels.
U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe called Avenatti’s conduct outrageous and said he operated as if laws that apply to everyone else didn’t apply to him.
“Mr. Avenatti had become drunk on the power of his platform,” Judge Gardephe said in a Manhattan federal courtroom.
It was a long time coming, but Avenatti’s power bender is over. Consequences finally caught up to the man known by independent media pundits as the Creepy Porn Lawyer.
But will there be any consequences for the corporate media and Democrat politicians who helped create Avenatti’s power buzz by willingly pouring him drink after drink after drink?
Unsurprisingly, the answer is no, as the American culture has been confiscated by the Left.
Avenatti “enjoyed multiple platforms, especially CNN and MSNBC. The fraudster enjoyed favorable coverage across the establishment media landscape because he was always eager to hurl allegations at Donald Trump or his appointees,” the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman noted.
“Reviewing the Avenatti record, one may wonder how so many people could have decided that he deserved so much national attention and media affection. But it wasn’t only the press corps that adored him,” Freeman wrote.
Avenatti promoted the preposterous claim that thne-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had participated in a criminal organization that planned and executed a series of gang rapes. On Sept. 26, 2018, every Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter demanding a delay in the committee vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination in order for the FBI to investigate.
“Of course Judiciary Committee Democrats were abusing their power by promoting the unfounded Avenatti claims, happily working with the fraudster to attempt to assassinate a man’s character to further their political ends. Thank goodness they failed and Judge Kavanaugh is now Justice Kavanaugh,” Freeman wrote.
But the media love affair was even more intense. “TV News Hosted Michael Avenatti 254 Times in One Year,” said a headline from the press watchdog Media Research Center (MRC) in 2019.
CNN was the porn lawyer’s top cable enabler with a whopping 122 appearances; MSNBC earned a close second with 108. Broadcast networks hosted the attorney a combined 24 times (ABC: 12, CBS: 7, NBC: 5), while the Fox News Channel brought up the rear with just two appearances.
Writer Drew Holden has been on Twitter curating a collection of Avenatti devotionals presented by major media outlets.
“Among the absurd moments in the Trump-bashing era of political media occurred when leftist pundits like Brian Stelter of CNN were promoting Avenatti as a serious presidential contender,” Freeman noted. “A Washington Post columnist named Jennifer Rubin responded by attempting to position herself as one of the more sensible members of the adoring media pack. Rubin suggested that the lawyer lacked experience to be president but then professed her love for Avenatti on Twitter and suggested he run for Congress.”
Holden noted:
There should be an enormous lesson here: the media is incredibly vulnerable to a certain variety of camera-savvy huckster who tells them what they want to hear… The question now becomes: will anyone learn anything?
Alas, my hunch is no. No one has faced consequences from promoting and fawning over the fraud of Avenatti. Avenatti was good for business. And we’ll see more like him in no time.
Avenatti is the apotheosis of a character that’s been all-too-common in the Trump era: a thinly veiled fraud whom the media push because he says mean things about a Republican.
If the media hopes to build any trust with the American people, they need to stop creating Avenattis.
Freeman concluded: “To rebuild their audiences, the political actors who now dominate establishment media might want to consider this advice, and so should the politicians on the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
But they almost certainly won’t.
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