Michael Avenatti?s Lonely Fall

Defense attorney Howard Srebnick, in his opening argument, said the consultant sent Franklin 119 videos of Avenatti’s TV appearances.“They wanted this man right here,” Srebnick said, jabbing his finger at Avenatti, “because he had the platform to expose what happened at Nike.”What had happened, according to Franklin, stood to put Nike in legal jeopardy. Srebnick has sought to put the work that the firm did for Nike at the center of his defense, claiming it was trying to “whitewash” allegations about improper, and maybe illegal, corporate behavior.On March 19, 2019, at Geragos’s office on Fifth Avenue, he and Avenatti met with a delegation of lawyers for Nike, including a Boies Schiller partner named Scott Wilson. He said Avenatti pointed out that the timing would be particularly devastating, because the NCAA basketball tournament — one of the biggest events on the sports calendar — was set to begin in two days, and Nike was also due to report its quarterly stock earnings.“He thought he had leverage,” Wilson testified. “He thought he had explosive information and a platform through Twitter … to gin this up and turn it into a massive media scandal.” Avenatti said the problem would go away, Wilson testified, only if Nike agreed to an immediate settlement. In theory, they allow companies to correct problems; in practice, they often serve to keep them quiet.“We think we can make something happen,” Wilson said in a taped conference call with Geragos and Avenatti on March 20. I am not fucking around.” The two lawyers haggled over the cost of Avenatti’s proposed investigation, with Wilson eventually suggesting that “something in the $10-to-$20 million range” might be reasonable.The following afternoon, Wilson met with Geragos and Avenatti again to work out the details of the internal investigation, bringing along a hidden camera. Abruptly, he tossed a draft settlement across the table, addressing the coach’s claims against Nike, which by now were an afterthought.“So here’s the ask,” Avenatti said, leaning back in his chair and scratching his palm. Nike has their platform, and I have my platform.”Geragos attempted to conciliate, saying that “besides cashing checks, we like to also effect change.” (Prosecutors did not charge him with a crime.) But Avenatti stubbornly kept repeating his terms: a confidential investigation or public exposure. “If Nike wants to have one confidential settlement and we’re done, they can buy that for $22.5 million,” Avenatti said. And the company will die — not die, but they are going to incur cut after cut after cut after cut.” It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Avenatti that there might be another outcome: that he would be the one caught and killed.Srebnick, Avenatti’s lawyer, argued that while his client might have been “brash, tenacious, bullish, hard-charging,” he was always acting as an honest lawyer, representing a client who wanted a company’s unethical behavior — which Wilson did not dispute — to be punished and corrected.