Michael Avenatti’s Nike Extortion Case to Move Forward After His Attempt to Narrow Indictment Airballs

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The case against Michael Avenatti for attempting to extort Nike Inc. out of millions of dollars last year is moving forward after a New York district court judge threw out the celebrity lawyer’s attempts to have two counts of his three-part indictment dropped.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe rejected Avenatti’s argument that the two most damning parts of the case — one count of extortion and one count of transmitting interstate communications with intent to extort — should be tossed. While Avenatti claimed that the extortion counts were too vague to pursue, Gardephe stated in a Manhattan courtroom that “the indictment adequately alleges that Avenatti engaged in ‘wrongful’ conduct.”

“It pleads facts demonstrating that Avenatti used threats of economic and reputational harm to demand millions of dollars from Nike, for himself, to which he had no plausible claim of right,” the judge added.

He stands accused of trying to pressure Nike into paying him out $25 million last March, an extortion threat made under the guise that he would not publicly go after the sportswear company for allegedly bribing top high school players to play for Nike sponsored universities. Nike’s lawyers surreptitiously recorded these extortion threats before handing the evidence over to authorities. Avenatti, who rose to national prominence in 2018 after taking Stormy Daniels on as a client in her case against President Donald Trump, is slated to begin his trial on January 21.

Shortly after the district court’s ruling, Avenatti insisted on Twitter that “the actual evidence” will fully exonerate him “because I did absolutely nothing wrong.”

Once the actual evidence is presented in the Nike trial, I will be fully exonerated because I did absolutely nothing wrong.

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) January 6, 2020