Celeb lawyer Avenatti faces slew of charges

Federal prosecutors in California said Thursday they had indicted attorney Michael Avenatti on 36 counts of stealing millions of dollars from clients, tax evasion, bank fraud, and lying during bankruptcy proceedings. Avenatti, 48, was arrested last month in New York on unrelated allegations he tried to shake down Nike for up to $25 million.

The high-profile attorney is best known for representing pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, in lawsuits against President Donald Trump. Those suits have been dismissed. The 61-page indictment against Avenatti gave a laundry list of alleged greed and graft spanning years, during which the lawyer is accused of embezzling settlement money from clients, lying about his income to banks and the government, and shuffling millions of dollars from one account to another to try to cover up his deception. The new charges against him carry a potential sentence of 335 years in prison. On Thursday, he said he planned to plead not guilty and called the accusations “bogus nonsense."