Michael Avenatti, who is representing porn star Stormy Daniels and is a potential 2020 presidential candidate, said rumors that he was “duped” by fabricated allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have left him and his client undeterred.
“Nothing has changed and we haven’t backed off anything,” Avenatti said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
Avenatti announced this week he has clients with allegations against Kavanaugh, and one of them will publicly come forward with the allegations in the next several days.
Avenatti told the Washington Examiner Monday evening that he expected his client to come forward in the next 48 hours. On Tuesday morning, he said he expected his client would come forward in the next 36 hours, although he noted that it would depend on when his client was ready.
“Let me be clear: We will disclose the client’s name and accusations only when SHE is ready and we have adequate security measures in place,” Avenatti tweeted Tuesday morning. “And not a moment before that. It is her choice and hers alone as to when to surface bc it is her life. We expect it within the next 36 hrs.”
[Also read: Dershowitz rips Avenatti: ‘I don’t think he helps the legal profession’]
He later made his Twitter account private Tuesday morning and claimed “the bots and Trump trolls are out in full force due to my representation re Kavanaugh.”
A user of 4Chan, a controversial message board popular with Internet trolls, subsequently posted that his girlfriend had contacted Avenatti on several devices and told him they had damaging information about Kavanaugh. Eventually, the user said his girlfriend no longer wanted to continue the prank and proceeded to destroy the cellphones.
Avenatti denied that he was duped later Tuesday afternoon.
“There is a rumor being floated that I was ‘duped’ or ‘pranked’ by a 4Chan user re Kavanaugh,” Avenatti tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “I have received multiple inquiries about it. This is completely false. It never happened; it is a total fabrication. None of it is true. The right must be very worried. They should be.”
Aventatti sent tweets Sunday evening including a screenshot of an email he sent to chief counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee Mike Davis detailing that he is “aware of significant evidence of multiple house parties in the Washington, D.C. area during the 1980s” and claimed that Kavanaugh, Judge, and others would “participate in the targeting of women with alcohol/drugs to allow a ‘train’ of men to subsequently gang rape them.”
Avenatti also asserted on Twitter that his plan and his client’s plan have not altered since this weekend.
“Nothing has changed. Our plan has been consistent since this weekend,” Avenatti tweeted Tuesday evening. “We surfaced the allegations before the client was ready to reveal her identify in order to give the committee and public a heads up.”
Kavanaugh rejected the claims in an interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum and called them “totally false and outrageous.”
Kavanaugh has been accused by two women of sexual misconduct. Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman, claims Kavanaugh forced himself onto her at a high school party in the 1980s.
The New Yorker published a piece on Sunday in which Deborah Ramirez accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at a college party in the 1980s at Yale University when they were students.
Kavanaugh has denied the allegations, and he and Ford are slated to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
