Avenatti Driven by Greed in Bid to Extort Nike, Jury Told (1)

Celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti tried to extort as much as $25 million from Nike Inc. to line his pockets at the expense of a client with serious allegations against the shoe and apparel maker, a federal prosecutor told a New York jury.

Avenatti, now on trial in Manhattan, tried to rip off Nike while representing a youth basketball coach who alleged the company made illegal payments to elite high school athletes, demanding payment for himself instead of his client, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman said in his opening statement on Wednesday.

“The defendant had a weapon -- a very modern weapon,” Sobelman told the jury of six men and six women. “He had a big following on social media and a big presence on TV and the news, and he found a way to use that weapon.”

Michael Avenatti

Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg

Avenatti, 48, gained a national profile while representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump. The California lawyer argues Nike made a false claim of extortion against him to distract from the company’s allegedly illegal behavior, and that the case was politically motivated because Avenatti was a high-profile public nemesis of Trump.

Sobelman said jurors would learn during the trial that Avenatti “was deeply in debt and his law firm had trouble paying its employees. He owed a ton of money and the scheme would make him the very millions he needed.”

Read More: Nike Being Probed by SEC on Illicit-Payment Claim, Jury Told

In his opening statement, defense attorney Howard Srebnick said Avenatti’s demands were part of his attempt to carry out the wishes of his client, who wanted Nike to clean up its behavior. While Avenatti would have profited, the goal was to end what his client called corruption at Nike, Srebnick said.

“It is true Mr. Avenatti is brash, he’s aggressive, tenacious, bullish, hard-charging,” Srebnick said. “Sometimes he’s outrageous and sometimes he might even be offensive, but that isn’t what we put people in prison for.”

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Avenatti in March after he allegedly demanded that Nike pay him and a colleague as much as $25 million to conduct an internal probe of the company.

In exchange, Avenatti said he’d cancel a scheduled press conference that would damage Nike’s finances and reputation, the government alleges. The press conference would have been used to go public with claims by his client, Gary Franklin, about illicit payments to high school basketball players.

Avenatti faces separate criminal charges in California.

Read More: Extortion or Negotiation? Avenatti’s Nike Jury Will Decide

(Updates with comments from defense lawyer.)

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

Steve Stroth, Joe Schneider

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