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Can Senator Feinstein Block The Appointment of Rachel Mitchell?

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As you know by now, Maricopa County (Arizona) sex crimes unit chief Rachel Mitchell has been deemed by Chuck Grassley and the Senate Judiciary Republicans as their front person to examine Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. From NBC News:

The woman chosen by Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans to question Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser will be in an unusual position when she goes face-to-face with Christine Blasey Ford on Thursday.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley announced Tuesday that he hired Rachel Mitchell, an outside attorney to question Kavanaugh and Ford, on behalf of the 11 male Republicans on the committee — despite Ford’s wishes to be questioned by the senators themselves about her accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when the two were teenagers.

So, the eleven old white men of the SJC want a female stand in to make their evisceration and shining on of putative kidnapping, sexual assault and attempted rape victim Dr. Ford. Because the optics the GOP men, and men are the only sex that has ever served for Republicans on SJC, looked too ugly for even them.

But is this unprecedented move, clearly designed with public optics and maximal humiliation of Dr. Ford even appropriate? Maybe not!

Now, I am not a Senate Rules expert, but a comment made me go do a little digging. Here is the text of the the most recent version of the United States Senate Standing Rules, Orders, Laws, And Resolutions. Here, specifically, is the section, contained in Chapter 43 thereof, in §4301(i)(3) relating to committee retention of consultants:

(3) With respect to the standing committees of the Senate, any such consultant or organization shall be selected by the chairman and ranking minority member of the committee, acting jointly. With respect to the standing committees of the House of Representatives, the standing com- mittee concerned shall select any such consultant or organization. The committee shall submit to the Committee on Rules and Administration in the case of standing committees of the Senate, and the Committee on House Oversight in the case of standing committees of the House of Representatives, information bearing on the qualifications of each consultant whose services are procured pursuant to this subsection, including organizations, and such information shall be retained by that committee and shall be made available for public inspection upon request. (Emphasis added)

So, Senator Feinstein, is this indeed the case? If so, why would you assent to appointment of a prosecutorial thug like Rachel Mitchell to examine the putative victim here, Dr. Ford?

Rachel Mitchell is currently head of the Sex Crimes Unit in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO). She has served under three heads of the MCAO, but she was elevated to her current position because she was an extremist who fit the desired bill by the notorious former MCAO head, Andrew Thomas. As you may recall, Andy Thomas not only had to leave the MCAO in disgrace, but subsequently was disbarred for his zealotry. And that kind of craven zealot is exactly who Rachel Mitchell identified with and was promoted by back in January of 2005. And is Mitchell always hard on sex criminals? No, in fact her past also includes sweetheart deals to abusive clergy members in politically charged cases.

Rachel Mitchell is one of the worst choices imaginable for the current task. It is a heinous move by Chuck Grassley and a direct and complete screw you to Dr. Ford and sexual abuse and rape victims across the United States and world.

And the “screw you” to victims is especially salient with the existence of additional putative victims of Brett Kavanaugh’s drunken debauchery. Not only is there Debbie Ramirez, who did not seek to come forward, but was located because friends and classmates of hers and Kavanaugh, while Kavanaugh was at Yale, started recalling her victimization and talking about it. Jane Mayer has more on that, not to mention her and Ronan Farrow’s original reporting on Ramirez.

And, just as of an hour or two ago, yet another troubling story of Brett Kavanaugh’s misogyny and conduct has been made public by her lawyer Michael Avenatti. Julie Swetnick has issued a sworn affidavit that is chilling. Swetnick is a A 1980 graduate of Gaithersburg High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and has has held multiple security clearances for work done at the Treasury Department, U.S. Mint, IRS, State Department and Justice Department. In short, she is a more than credible person who has put her statement under oath and penalty of perjury.

Here is her affidavit, and it is chilling. It describes what now seems obvious, Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were part of a group of a private boys school wilding gang that drank to excess regularly mistreated women. Judge and Kavanaugh were “joined at the hip” according to Swetnick. She further states:

There is more, much more, including descriptions of girls, including Ms. Swetnick herself, being knocked out with spiked punch and gang raped.

And that is where we find ourselves today. It appears that Senator Feinstein can put the kibosh on the craven hiring of a zealot prosecutorial thug like Rachel Mitchell and, further, can with the help of any and all Republican Senators of conscience, slow down this train wreck and investigate the claims and give a real hearing. That means someone among Jeff Flake, Lisa Murlowski, Susan Collins, or another, needs to step up and do the right thing. Will they? Will Senator Feinstein?

Within the last minute, Senator Feinstein has issued the following statement:

Washington—Following the release of a sworn affidavit from Julie Swetnick detailing new allegations of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh, all 10 Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee today urged President Trump to immediately withdraw the nomination or order an FBI investigation into all allegations.

The senators wrote: “We are writing to request that you immediately withdraw the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court or direct the FBI to re-open its background investigation and thoroughly examine the multiple allegations of sexual assault.

“Judge Kavanaugh is being considered for a promotion. He is asking for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court where he will have the opportunity to rule on matters that will impact Americans for decades. The standard of character and fitness for a position on the nation’s highest court must be higher than this. Judge Kavanaugh has staunchly declared his respect for women and issued blanket denials of any possible misconduct, but those declarations are in serious doubt.”

That is a nice statement, but there appears to be so much more that Senator Feinstein can do Jeff Flake just took to the Senate Floor and, despite some words of empathy, wholeheartedly accepted that tomorrow’s sham hearing in SJC is all that there will ever be. While Flake appeared close to tears, he, as usual, said and intends to do nothing admirable and/or heroic.

It is a sad show we are watching. The hallowed halls of the Supreme Court deserve better, and so too do the American people.

Cohen May Be Shopping a Cooperation Agreement; It’s Not Clear Anyone Is Buying

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In the wake of yesterday’s twin guilty verdicts, the punditocracy has asserted, based on an assumption that Michael Cohen knows everything Trump did, that his guilty plea poses a bigger problem for Trump than Paul Manafort’s guilty verdict right now.

I’m not convinced. Indeed, I have real questions about whether Cohen faces anything other than his own charges in the Russian conspiracy case.

Trump has seen everything Cohen has on him

I’ll have more in a bit about the Cohen-Trump challenge to SDNY’s use of a clean team to sort out privileged materials. It was undoubtedly the right decision on Kimba Wood’s part for the legitimacy of the Cohen prosecution. But what it did for Cohen is make him (or Trump) spend a lot of money to give Trump a view of every piece of dirt he had on him.

The people who believe Cohen is a bigger threat to Trump than Manafort are premising that on four month old statements from Trump’s lawyers who have, in the interim, not only reviewed everything SDNY seized from Cohen, but also proven they underestimate the scope of Trump’s risk in the Russia investigation, and not just from Don McGahn.

Trump may have pre-empted what risk Cohen has

On TV this morning, Lanny Davis claimed that Trump’s lawyers already admitted to Mueller that he directed Cohen to pay off Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels.

There is no dispute that Donald Trump committed a crime. No dispute because his own lawyers said to the Special Counsel in a letter that he directed — that’s the word they used — Michael Cohen to do these payments.

It’s unclear what this letter is. It’s unclear why Trump’s lawyers would address it to Mueller rather than SDNY (aside from the fact that the Trump team never quite understood that under Rod Rosenstein’s supervision, Mueller referred the hush payments to SDNY, or perhaps the fact that suggesting Trump’s second conspiracy to cheat to get elected must be part of the investigation into Trump’s first conspiracy to cheat to get elected).

But if it is true that Trump’s team already admitted this to DOJ, regardless of who at DOJ, then it really undermines any value of having Cohen say so as part of a plea deal with regards to the hush payments. Trump’s a vindictive fuck, and depriving Cohen any value for turning on him would be the kind of thing he would do on “principle.”

Davis’ televised proffers don’t hold up to scrutiny

Since yesterday, Davis has publicly claimed Cohen has the goods on Trump’s charity (probably true) and the Russian hack. [Update: AP reports NYS has subpoenaed Cohen with regards to Trump’s foundation.]

In response to the latter claims, Richard Burr and Mark Warner issued a statement noting that that claim conflicts with Cohen’s past testimony.

We have obviously followed today’s reporting about Michael Cohen with great interest. He appears to be pleading guilty to very serious charges, however, we have no insight into any agreements he and his legal team have allegedly reached with prosecutors in New York.

What we can say is that we recently reengaged with Mr. Cohen and his team following press reports that suggested he had advance knowledge of the June 2016 meeting between campaign officials and Russian lawyers at Trump Tower. Mr. Cohen had testified before the Committee that he was not aware of the meeting prior to its disclosure in the press last summer. As such, the Committee inquired of Mr. Cohen’s legal team as to whether Mr. Cohen stood by his testimony. They responded that he did stand by his testimony.

We hope that today’s developments and Mr. Cohen’s plea agreement will not preclude his appearance before our Committee as needed for our ongoing investigation.

The truth is probably that Cohen had knowledge that Trump knew about some release — like the July release to Wikileaks — before it happened. But Mueller already has testimony to that effect, including from Omarosa, who as far as we know didn’t say it in an attempt to get out of criminal exposure herself.

And Cohen’s definitely not getting a cooperation agreement by working the press

Even SDNY hates when potential cooperating witnesses play the press; Michael Avenatti got in trouble for scheduling a press appearance around testimony. But that’s all the more true of Mueller. Indeed, a central part of Mueller’s argument that Papadopoulos offered no cooperation to prosecutors is that he took part in a NYT story in December.

Following the proffer sessions in August and September 2017, the government arranged to meet again with the defendant to ask further questions in late December 2017. However, upon learning that the defendant had participated in a media interview with a national publication concerning his case, the government canceled that meeting. (PSR ¶ 50). The government is aware that the defendant and his spouse have participated in several additional media interviews concerning his case.

Cohen has been all over the media since before they first proffered testimony (which as I understand it was some time ago). Having done that, there was little chance Mueller was going to buy what Cohen was offering publicly.

Mueller may intend to indict Cohen for his own role in the conspiracy

This part is speculative. But I think Mueller may be at the point where he’s preserving the maximal criminal liability of key conspirators. Already, he has limited the protection offered to cooperating witnesses aside from Rick Gates. Of particular note, Mike Flynn (whose latest sentencing continuation just got extended 24 days, to the date Manafort’s next trial starts) is only protected for the lies he told FBI and a FARA filing; he’s still exposed for his own role in the Russia conspiracy.

So it may well be that Mueller won’t give Cohen a cooperation agreement because he believes he can get to Cohen’s exposure on the Russia conspiracy (via witnesses like Felix Sater, who has been “cooperating’ for some time) with the evidence he has, and so sees no reason to limit that exposure for evidence he also already has from other witnesses.

As I disclosed last month, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

The Oligarch “Peace” of the Pie Plan

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I keep coming back to this post I wrote a year ago, arguing that the policy payoff phase of the Russian investigation appears to have as much to do with remapping the Middle East in exchange for personal enrichment as anything else (what I call ConFraudUs for foreign policy).

Kushner’s “peace plan” is not so much a plan for peace. It’s a plan for a complete remapping of the Middle East according to a vision the Israelis and Saudis have long been espousing (and note the multiple nods on Trump’s trip to the growing alliance between the two, including Trump’s flight directly from Riyadh to Tel Aviv and Bibi’s comment on “common dangers are turning former enemies into partners”). It’s a vision for still more oppression (a view that Trump supports globally, in any case).

Yes, it’d probably all be accomplished with corrupt self-enrichment on the part of all players.

Since then, Erin Banco (who first confirmed that Erik Prince had met with Kirill Dmitriev) revealed that Mueller is investigating several other meetings in the Seychelles, on top of the one involving Prince.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is examining a series of previously unreported meetings that took place in 2017 in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, as part of its broader investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to two sources briefed on the investigation.

The sources said several of those meetings took place around the same time as another meeting in the Seychelles between Erik Prince, founder of the security company Blackwater, Kirill Dmitriev, the director of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the United Arab Emirates (also known as “MBZ”). Details of that earlier meetingwere first reported by the Washington Post last year.

[snip]

Individuals connected to the Saudi financial system, including the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and the Arab National Bank, flew into the island the second week of January 2017, as did an aircraft purportedly owned by the former deputy minister of defense, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, fight records show. Other individuals on those aircraft held passports from Egypt and Singapore.

Dmitriev flew into the Seychelles Jan. 11, 2017 with his wife Natalia Popova and another woman with the last name Boldovskaia. Six other Russian individuals flew to the island just a few days after Dmitriev. The aircraft’s ownership is unclear but it flew between Russia, Geneva and Cyprus in 2017.

Others on the island included Alexander Mashkevitch, an alleged financier of Bayrock, an investment vehicle linked to Trump, and Sheikh Abdulrahman Khalid BinMahfouz, according to flight records. BinMahfouz’s father, before his death, was a billionaire and the former chairman of Saudi Arabia’s first private bank.

Today, ABC has a report that not just Tom Barrack (who was interviewed last year), but several others have been interviewed about foreign inauguration donations.

Barrack, a real estate investor, has long been described as a Trump “whisperer” whose close friendship with the president landed him a prime appearance during the GOP convention the night Trump accepted his party’s nomination.

The billionaire runs a fund with hundreds of millions in real estate and private equity holdings in the Middle East. Barrack oversaw the largest inaugural fundraising effort in U.S. history, bringing in $107 million – more than double what President Barack Obama raised for his first swearing-in festivities.

According to a source who has sat with the Mueller team for interviews in recent weeks, the special counsel is examining donors who have either business or personal connections in Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

[snip]

Special counsel investigators have also asked witnesses about specific inauguration donors, including American businessmen Leonard Blavatnik, and Andrew Intrater, according to sources familiar with the Mueller sessions.

Blavatnik has been funding not just Trump, but Republicans generally, including (especially) Mitch McConnell.

An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik’s family emigrated to the U.S. in the late ’70s from the U.S.S.R. and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late ’80s.

Data from the Federal Election Commission show that Blavatnik’s campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. During that season he contributed $53,400. His contributions increased to $135,552 in 2011-12 and to $273,600 in 2013-14, still bipartisan.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik’s political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

Also note that all the Cohen side clients revealed by Michael Avenatti had some kind of tie to inauguration donations.

And remember that the leftover inauguration donations, which were supposed to be donated to charity, have simply disappeared (though Mueller, with subpoena power, may well know precisely where it went).

This all seems like an effort by a bunch of oligarchs to take remap the world in their self-interest.

Trump Repeats the “Tapp” Story Line from Season One

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Last March 4, as it became clear the FBI was investigating him, President Trump wrote a bunch of tweets that claimed, falsely, that he had been wiretapped.

He even called for a “good lawyer” to make a case out of the “fact” that Obama was tapping his phone.

Today, Day Two of the Don and Rudy show, NBC has an exclusive story reporting that Michael Cohen’s phones were tapped before he was raided by the FBI a few weeks ago.

It’s certainly possible that the story is true. After all, prosecutors already revealed that “the USAO-SDNY has already obtained search warrants – covert until this point – on multiple different email accounts maintained by Cohen.” They also referred to some [redacted] reason to be concerned that Cohen was destroying evidence. So it’s certainly feasible SDNY had probable cause and reason to want to wiretap mob lawyer Michael Cohen.

But within minutes of the story breaking, Rudy was on the phone with Robert Costa, making false claims that if the wiretap picked up a conversation between Trump and Cohen, as the NBC report claims based off a single source, the FBI would need to notify Trump.

Giuliani tells me he can’t confirm there were wiretaps, hasn’t been informed. But when read NBC report, he was furious. “If they picked up the president, they would have had to notify him.” Said if true, wld be a “mockery” of attorney-client privilege and “gov’t misconduct”

And Giuliani’s concerns echo advice he gave Trump as the Cohen story was breaking, to stay off the phones with Cohen because they might be tapped. something the story itself describes, attributed to “sources close to” Rudy.

After the raid, members of Trump’s legal team advised the president not to speak to Cohen, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Two sources close to Trump’s newest attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, say he learned that days after the raid the president had made a call to Cohen, and told Trump never to call again out of concern the call was being recorded by prosecutors.

Why would this detail be included in this NBC story? It’s like a Chekhov suicide pill, unnecessary to the story in chief but useful for giving a story additional dramatic meaning [yes, I made that term up, but I’ve got a PhD in literature, so am taking license to do so].

Incidentally, Corey Lewandowski was dining with Rudy last night before he went on Hannity.

As to the report about the wiretap itself, the NBC story is sourced to:

” two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen” [a kind of code often used to describe defense lawyers, though there are so many involved in this wiretap that it could be any of many]

“one person with direct knowledge”

“the person ” [that is, with direct knowledge — this is the confirmation that a call to the White House got picked up]

Nowhere does the story explain why someone with knowledge of a wiretap would want to burn it.

Certainly, there are explanations that given the people involved might explain the story. Michael Avenatti has claimed to know quite a bit about the surveillance of Michael Cohen; certainly, he has had communications with prosecutors involved, not least about whether he can intervene in the case. Alternately, Rudy is still quite close to some of NY’s more unethical FBI Agents, and it’s certainly possible one of them leaked the news.

By all means, let’s entertain the distinct possibility that the President’s personal lawyer, with all his mob ties, got treated like a mob lawyer. But let’s remember that Rudy appears to have made promises he can end the investigations into the President in the short term. He’s a liar. And Trump has specifically lied about being wiretapped before. So even if Cohen was wiretapped, beware serial liars making claims about the impact of such wiretaps on the President himself.

The President who cried “wiretap” once too often should be treated with a great deal of skepticism, particularly given the way Rudy immediately used this story to attack the investigation into Cohen.

Update: And now Rudy is using the alleged wiretap to call for Sessions to investigate those who were investigating  Cohen.

Rudy Giuliani called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to intervene in the Michael Cohen case and put the people behind the probe “under investigation” in a phone call with The Hill on Thursday.

“I am waiting for the Attorney General to step in, in his role as defender of justice, and put these people under investigation,” Giuliani said, reacting to an NBC News report that phones belonging to Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, had been tapped by investigators.

He gives up the game when he complains that FBI didn’t inform “us” of the alleged wiretap.

But Giuliani said that a wiretapping of Cohen would amount to “gross misconduct” by the government. He further alleged that “this case has been surrounded by numerous acts” that fit that description.

Giuliani added sarcastically, “And they don’t even notify us? I mean, he’s only the president of the United States.”

Rudy wasn’t representing Trump when the raid occurred.

Update: Rudy again gives up the game when he suggests only the FBI, the independent counsel, or DOJ would know about this wiretap.

Giuliani said that he found out about the wiretap news from NBC News’ report, which cited “two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings,” and not from Cohen himself. He believed someone in the Justice Department was behind the leak.

“Nobody else would know about it,” Giuliani said. “Cohen didn’t know about it, so it has to be the FBI, the independent counsel, or the Justice Department.”

“Anybody who says that I’m exaggerating when I say that this is an out-of-control investigation and they’re acting like storm troopers––give me a break, baby! They prove it every day.”

As I’ve already suggested, Avenatti is one other outsider who might have a whiff of this, if true. But in any case, the raid, and therefore the wiretap, is understood to have involved an independent investigation conducted by SDNY, not Mueller’s team. If true, there’s no way Mueller would know about it either. And yet Rudy uses it to suggest the Mueller investigation is out of control.

Update: … and NBC has retracted the story. FBI had a pen register on Cohen, not a wiretap. Which of course they would, because that’s one thing they use to decide which emails — which we know they collected — to read.

Stormy Weather Ahead

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As you may have heard, there is an interview on CBS 60 Minutes tonight of former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels. In the last 48 hours, there have been a slew of Stormy biographies. From the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN. All worth a check if you are interested, but all paint a similar picture.

It is a picture of a modern empowered and self assured woman. She is no slouch, she is bright and ready. It was been all too casual for the press to early on slough her off and characterize her as a “porn star” like that automatically makes some throw away bimbo. Clearly, nothing is further from the case.

The picture that emerges on closer inspection is far different. She is an informed and savvy woman in full. She is a mother and businesswoman, and one who understands and worries about the conflicts between the two. Karen McDougal, in her Thursday interview on CNN came off as genuine and honest, even if somewhat lost in why she is here with all of the public now. Daniels has none of that. And her story is, within the salacious category Trump brings us to consider, far more compelling.

The stories of Daniels and McDougall were literally concurrent, starting with a golf tournament tete a tete at the Tahoe Pro Am. But McDougall presents as a jilted woman once in love, Daniels is flat out a smarter woman who knew then, and knows now, what was up, then and now, and just isn’t going to stand for the rank hypocrisy and lying by Trump and his goons like Michael Cohen.

The rushed out bios linked above largely track each other, but to my eye, the New York Times is the best:

Those who know her well have registered the moment differently. Ms. Clifford has subsisted amid the seamier elements of a business often rife with exploitation and unruly fare; more than a few of her film titles are unprintable. But for most of her professional life, Ms. Clifford has been a woman in control of her own narrative in a field where that can be uncommon. With an instinct for self-promotion, she evolved from “kindergarten circuit” stripper to star actress and director, and occasional mainstream success, by her late 20s. Why would a piece of paper and an executive legal team set her back?
….
“She was a very serious businesswoman and a filmmaker and had taken the reins of her career,” said Judd Apatow, who directed her cameos in the R-rated comedies “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” “She is not someone to be underestimated.”
….
She has a daughter, a third husband and an expensive hobby: equestrian shows. “She blends right in,” said Packy McGaughan, a trainer on the competition circuit.
….
“Just as these misguided arbiters of the mainstream view an adult entertainment star as an anathema to the political process,” she said, when she eventually decided against a bid, “so too do they view the dishwasher, the cashier or the bus driver.”

This woman is real. Please go read at least the NY Times story, if not the others linked. She is everything you think she is, and far, far, more. And she has no fear. Not of her career, and not of Trump. That has to terrify Trump.

Here is the other thing that is different: Stormy Daniels has Michael Avenatti as her lawyer. Never met or talked to Avenatti before, but I have heard of him in cases (and from auto racing things), and from friends, for several years. He is good.

After three years at O’Melveny, he joined Greene Broillet & Wheeler, a Los Angeles boutique litigation firm. While there, Michael spearheaded many high-profile cases, including a $10 million defamation case against Paris Hilton; a successful idea theft lawsuit involving the reality show The Apprentice and its producer, Mark Burnett, as well as Donald Trump; and a large corporate multi-national embezzlement case involving in excess of $42,000,000.

In 2007, Michael formed the law firm Eagan Avenatti, LLP (fka Eagan O’Malley & Avenatti, LLP), with offices in Newport Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Since co-founding the firm, Michael has been responsible for securing a number of large verdicts and settlements as lead counsel, including an April 2017 $454 Million verdict after a jury trial in Federal Court in Los Angeles in a fraud case against Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB) and Halyard Health (NYSE: HYH) that was featured on 60 Minutes (won every jury question as to every defendant); a $80.5 million class action settlement against Service Corporation International (NYSE: SCI) in another case featured on 60 Minutes and in the international press (settlement reached in the middle of trial); a $41 million jury verdict after a nearly five-week trial in New Jersey; a $39 million settlement in a case involving the alleged theft of trade secrets; and a $13 million plus verdict after a six week jury trial in Palm Beach, Florida (won every jury question as to every defendant). In 2015, Michael prevailed against the National Football League after a two-week jury trial in Federal District Court in Dallas, Texas after obtaining a court order requiring Jerry Jones to attend trial and be cross-examined.

I had heard of him before, but really first watched Avenatti when he took on the National Football League and Jerry Jones. Because of some sports law friends, some of whom were closer to that story, I paid attention. Avenatti is seriously that good, and he has the extra bonus of knowing how to be a good trial lawyer AND play the PR game, personally, well. There are not many such lawyers, and ones tending to the PR more than the law are routinely panned mercilessly here at this blog. For good reason.

If you don’t have a winning strategy with the press, don’t talk to the press. Even if you think you do, think twice and thrice before doing so. Or, by my book, just don’t do it. But Avenatti has a really special combination of savvy, and has proven it long before Stormy Daniels.

Nobody knows how it all ends up, and playing the press is a risky game even for those genuinely good at it. But, so far, Avenatti and Stormy have played Trump and the press like a Stradivarius.

And, if as Trump is reportedly contemplating, Trump decides to get personally aggressive, watch out. He may well have met his match with Ms. Daniels and Michael Avenatti. By my guess, they are almost making bank Trump will try that ill advised tact. Let it be. Please, let it be.