For a normal person, finding out that you’re not being charged with criminal conspiracy with a foreign government would be great enough news. But to find out that your former mistress’s attorney is facing criminal charges from two separate U.S. attorneys for two separate sets of crimes? That’s just raw, unadulterated schadenfreude for the president of the United States.
Part-time #Resistance hero and full-time Trump foe Michael Avenatti finally graduated from media grifting and refusing to pay back creditors to big boy crimes, and he now faces upwards of a century in the clinker. A U.S. attorney’s office in California has charged Avenatti with embezzlement and fraud, and the Southern District of New York alleges that the former 2020 hopeful attempted to extort Nike for tens of millions of dollars.
Grifters gotta grift, no matter the circumstances. But let’s not forget that for longer than a hot second, cable news touted this nutjob as a serious presidential contender, legitimizing him as an actual political force. And all because he was representing a porn star who once banged the president and allegedly got paid to shut her mouth about it.
Sure, serious reporters at the Wall Street Journal performed a massive public service in unearthing that Trump may have committed a campaign finance violation in directing his personal fixer Michael Cohen to issue hush-money payouts to Stormy Daniels and fellow former paramour Karen McDougal. But outside of the legal question regarding Trump’s nondisclosure deal with Daniels, Avenatti had zero intel or analysis to offer the public. He was nothing but a cable news clown, a political sideshow milked by networks so they could have an excuse to gossip about the president’s sex life in salacious details like a couple of high school mean girls.
For the sake of our Fourth Estate, I truly wish I were kidding. But it’s worth revisiting the deluge of delusional Avenatti wishcasting over the past year.
Avenatti announced Daniels’ lawsuit against Trump on March 6 of last year. In the subsequent two months and four days, Avenatti appeared on CNN 65 times and MSNBC 43 times, earning him around $175 million in free media coverage. Brian Stelter, CNN’s resident ombudsman, dedicated regular segments speculating with Avenatti about his political future, entertaining him as a serious presidential contender.
“I think President Obama also had a lot of TV star power and that helped him pre-Trump,” Stelter mused with Avenatti by his side earlier last year. “But Trump is more evidence of this. And looking ahead to 2020, one reason I’m taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news.”
His colleague Chris Cillizza echoed the same in July with a piece headlined, “President Michael Avenatti? Never say never!”
Avenatti received glowing media treatment not just on cable, but also in fluffy profiles flanked by Annie Leibovitz, heralded as a Resistance-era hero helping a porn star take down the president.
But grifters always come to collect, and eventually Avenatti’s ran dry. There were domestic violence allegations, lawsuit losses adding up Avenatti’s bill into the tens of millions, a judge’s ruling that Daniels had to pay Trump more than a quarter-million dollars as a result of Avenatti’s less-than-quixotic gambit, and, of course, the fact that Avenatti blew up whatever odds remained of the #Resistance nuking Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination after he launched the Julie Swetnick farce.
So Avenatti proved himself not the consummate politico, and the media slowly stepped back.
Want a break from the Mueller, Trump, Avenatti news cycle? Here’s the live stream for Apple’s news + entertainment event https://t.co/geuJ2heiqm
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 25, 2019
When pressed to actually explain how Avenatti happened, Cillizza blamed — you guessed it! — Trump.
“Suddenly, Avenatti was everywhere. His seeming ability to back up his braggadocio coupled with his never-say-no attitude toward cable TV appearances and always-lively Twitter feed made him catnip for a political-media culture that has become addicted to the reality TV aspects of Trump’s candidacy and presidency,” Cillizza explained just hours after today’s Avenatti news broke.
Wow, I wonder who’s to blame for Avenatti’s near-ubiquity on television!
It’s a mystery, I tell you.
Avenatti may be the greatest grifter of the Trump era, but he certainly won’t be the last. And judging by Cillizza’s clueless response, it’s a safe bet that the media learned nothing and will not avoid this same mistake next time.
