Lawyers representing President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen submitted a court filing on Friday arguing that porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti should not represent Daniels in the dispute over the raids of Cohen’s office and home last month.
The filing from Cohen’s attorneys Stephen Ryan, Todd Harrison, and Joseph Evans, claim that Avenatti “appears to have repeatedly violated” the New York Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers.
“Mr. Avenatti published inaccurate statements regarding Mr. Cohen,” Cohen’s lawyers wrote, per BuzzFeed News. “Second, Mr. Avenatti also published, at the same time, factually accurate information regarding Mr. Cohen’s banking transactions that had no lawful source, and we requested that the Court inquire as to how he obtained the information. Third, Mr. Avenatti made further inaccurate statements to the public, all with the purpose of prejudicing Mr. Cohen in the proceedings in which Mr. Avenatti now seeks admission.”
The lawyers claim that “seemingly authoritative press accounts have also details that a federal law enforcement official apparently intentionally disclosed to Mr. Avenatti directly or indirectly certain suspicious activity reports (SARs) reports regarding Mr. Cohen.”
They pointed to an article that appeared in the New Yorker in which an unnamed individual claimed to be the law enforcement official who released banking documents about Cohen.
In response, Avenatti claimed that Cohen’s assertions were “baseless and inaccurate” in a statement to BuzzFeed.
“Mr. Cohen has presented no evidence that I received any information from the whistleblower identified in the New Yorker article reference by Mr. Cohen,” Avenatti said in a supplemental affidavit. He added that “news articles do not constitute admissible evidence.”
Avenatti is trying to appear in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York so he can represent Daniels due to concern that documents were obtained in the raid pertaining to Daniels. Cohen’s office and home were raided because he is the subject of a criminal investigation.
Daniels signed a nondisclosure agreement on the alleged affair in 2016 and was paid $130,000 by Cohen in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump more than a decade ago. However, she filed a lawsuit earlier this year claiming the NDA should be nullified because Trump didn’t sign it. Trump denies ever having an affair with Daniels.
