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| Michael Avenatti: Stormy Daniels lawyer charged with defrauding her | Michael Avenatti: Stormy Daniels lawyer charged with defrauding her |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| US lawyer Michael Avenatti has been charged with defrauding Stormy Daniels, the porn star he represented in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, federal prosecutors say. | US lawyer Michael Avenatti has been charged with defrauding Stormy Daniels, the porn star he represented in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, federal prosecutors say. |
| They said Mr Avenatti, 48, took the money Ms Daniels was supposed to get from a book deal. | They said Mr Avenatti, 48, took the money Ms Daniels was supposed to get from a book deal. |
| The high-profile lawyer already faces a number of fraud and embezzlement charges, including accusations of attempting to extort Nike. | |
| He has denied all the allegations. | |
| According to the indictment announced on Wednesday, Mr Avenatti is accused of using "misrepresentations and a fraudulent document purporting to bear his client's name and signature to convince his client's literary agent to divert money owed to Avenatti's client to an account controlled by Avenatti". | |
| "Avenatti then spent the money principally for his own personal and business purposes," it adds. | |
| It also revealed that he had been hit with extortion charges relating to the Nike case, announced in March. | |
| He has been accused of trying to blackmail the global sporting products maker out of more than $20m (£15m) by threatening to use his profile to inflict reputational harm on the firm. | |
| Writing on Twitter, Mr Avenatti said: "No monies relating to Ms. Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled. She received millions of dollars worth of legal services and we spent huge sums in expenses. She directly paid only $100.00 for all that she received. I look forward to a jury hearing the evidence." | |
| The lawyer formerly represented Stormy Daniels, who was suing the president to get out of a non-disclosure agreement she signed before the 2016 election. The non-disclosure agreement related to an affair she said she had with Mr Trump in 2006. | |
| The president has denied having an affair. | |
| The case was struck down by a US federal judge in March. |