The press’ love affair with attorney Michael Avenatti is decidedly one-sided: He takes what he wants, and they get very little in return, save for abuse and empty promises.
And they just keep going back for more.
Nothing exemplifies this exploitative relationship better than the fact that the press’ sweet, hot passion for Stormy Daniels’ lawyer hasn’t cooled even after he attacked three separate newsrooms for covering him critically.
The first threat went to Law&Crime, where Avenatti warned he’d sue the entire publication unless it agreed to re-write an April 26 article titled, “One Thing is Clear From Michael Cohen’s Hearing… No One Wanted Michael Avenatti There.” Avenatti, who also threatened the reporter and the reporter’s editor, claimed the story was “unfair” and “complete bullshit.”
It wasn’t.
“In a phone call the day after the article was published, Avenatti also told me if we didn’t make the changes he requested, he would also verbally bash our reporter on The View and make him look like a legal idiot and ‘buffoon’ (he was in a car on the way to The View when we talked),” said Law&Crime editor-in-chief Rachel Stockman.
She added, “Law&Crime has confirmed that Avenatti also threatened to ‘cut off’ certain networks and print publications for coverage that was unfavorable to him personally.”
The second threat went to the Daily Caller, where Avenatti said in a May 14 email to reporter Peter Hasson, “Let me be clear. If you and your colleagues do not stop with the hit pieces that are full of lies and defamatory statements, I will have no choice but to sue each of you and your publication for defamation.”
The Orange County attorney added, “If you think I’m kidding, you really don’t know anything about me. This is the last warning.”
And all of this because the Daily Caller published publicly available information pertaining to Avenatti’s legal and business history. Really, that’s it.
The lawyer would say later of his macho, empty threat, in a statement lacking any grammatical sense: “All journalists are not ethical, just because they’re a journalist. There’s good journalists and there’s bad journalists.”
He added, “If we encounter journalists that don’t get their facts straight by design, don’t follow the basic rules of journalism, purposely skew stories to fit their own political dialogue of what they want the message to be, we’re going to continue to call them out on that. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
The third threat went to the Hollywood Reporter‘s Eriq Gardner, whose questions about Avenatti’s competence and his media blitz strategy apparently rubbed the lawyer the wrong way. To be fair, Avenatti didn’t idly threaten a lawsuit this time around, though he certainly pulled the same tough-guy routine.
Keep in mind: As Avenatti is going back-and-forth with all this macho posturing, he is also averaging two television interviews per day.
He talks a big game everywhere he goes, claiming often that he has the potential to bring down the Trump administration with One Weird Trick. However, we’ve been at this story since January, and there have few real news breakthroughs.
But don’t expect media to break up with him any time soon. If they’re not ready to cut him loose even after he goes full Trump against critical journalists, they’re certainly not going to dump just because his teased “bombshells” don’t pan out.
