Michael Avenatti, Mark Geragos
Avenatti was arrested in New York on federal extortion charges, Nicolas Biase, with the United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York told The Hollywood Reporter.
Michael Avenatti is accused of trying to extort $20+ million from Nike.
According to the complaint, Avenatti threatened to hold a press conference to announce misconduct by Nike unless the athletic apparel company hired Avenatti and his co-conspirator to conduct an internal investigation for over $20 million.
Although the co-conspirator was not named in the criminal complain against Avenatti, The Wall Street Journal reported that Avenatti’s co-conspirator is celebrity attorney and CNN legal analyst Mark Geragos.
Yes, the same Mark Geragos who represented SJW Colin Kaepernick, hate hoaxer Jussie Smollett and murderer Scott Peterson.
It is unclear whether Geragos has been charged by the feds or is cooperating with investigators.
Poor CNN — first their Russian collusion fairy tale falls apart after 2 years — now their darling, Avenatti is going down on federal criminal charges and their legal analyst Mark Geragos is caught up in the drama as well.
Update: A CNN spox just said, “Mark Geragos is no longer a CNN contributor”
Just received this from a CNN spokeswoman on Mark Geragos, who is Michael Avenatti's alleged co-conspirator:
"Mark Geragos is no longer CNN contributor."
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 25, 2019
Recap of the complaint against Avenatti from New York feds:
A criminal complaint against Avenatti says he “devised a scheme to extort a company by means of an interstate communication by threatening to damage the company’s reputation if the company did not agree to make multi-million dollar payments to Avenatti and [co-conspirator], and further agree to pay an additional $1.5 million to a client of Avenatti’s.”
The complaint says that last Wednesday, Avenatti and a cooperating witness spoke by phone with lawyers for Nike “during which Avenatti stated, with respect to his demands for payment of millions of dollars, that if those demands were not met ‘I’ll go take ten billion dollars off your client’s market cap … I’m not f—ing around.’ ”
Avenatti even tweeted about it like a genius:
Tmrw at 11 am ET, we will be holding a press conference to disclose a major high school/college basketball scandal perpetrated by @Nike that we have uncovered. This criminal conduct reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball.
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 25, 2019
MAGA! = Michael Avenatti Getting Arrested!
