Disgraced former attorney Michael Avenatti told MSNBC that he received his harsh prison sentences in part due to him being the “most dangerous enemy” of former President Trump.
“I was not treated fairly and I was treated differently,” Avenatti told Ari Melber during a phone interview on Tuesday, claiming the Department of Justice under Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr had it out for him.
Avenatti, who took on porn star Stormy Daniels as a client in her attempts to sue Trump following their alleged affair, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2022 for cheating four former clients out of millions of dollars and trying to obstruct the IRS from collecting payroll taxes from a coffee shop that he owned.
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Previously, the former lawyer was convicted of stealing $300,000 from Daniels and attempting to extort footwear manufacturer Nike out of $25 million, crimes for which he was serving five years in jail.
Speaking from his California prison, Avenatti said the severity of his current punishment was influenced by his enemies in the Trump administration. Avenatti went from a liberal media darling in 2018 to a criminal defendant by 2019.
“I don’t believe there’s any question that I was treated differently and I believe if anyone is asked that honestly and looks at what happened here and if they’re honest in their answer, I believe that they would answer the same way that I have, Ari,” he said.
“I was indicted in three cases within 54 days. The government proceeded to stack these sentences on top of one another. I was not treated fairly and I was treated differently.”
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“And I firmly believe and will go to my grave believing that one of the reasons, the reason I was treated in this fashion, was because I was the biggest enemy of Donald Trump in 2018. There’s no question about that, and I was also his most dangerous enemy,” he declared.
Melber acknowledged Avenatti’s point but pushed back, asking why people should see his perspective if he committed the crimes and “expressed contrition for them.”
“Why should people take your word on any of this tonight?” he asked.
“Well, because I think I demonstrated over a significant period of time and over a couple of decades of legal work that I’ve done a lot of good, that a lot of what I’d said has checked out, that I generally have not trafficked in nonsense,” he said. “There’s no question that I made mistakes.”
He added, “There’s no question that I exercised poor judgment at times, but I think people need to ask yourself or themselves, ‘Are you really going to define somebody by the worst thing they did in their life or look at the totality of the body of their work?”
Daniels, who once posed with Avenatti for a Vogue photo shoot, recently said during an appearance on “The View” that Avenatti used his powers for “evil” and she never trusted him.
