A federal appeals court has ordered that the 14-year sentence of former celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti be recalculated due to legal errors made by the Los Angeles trial court that sentenced him in 2022. The court found that the trial court applied an unwarranted obstruction of justice enhancement and failed to account for the value of the legal services and money that Avenatti did pay his clients when calculating the amount the victims lost.
Avenatti, who became famous for his representation of adult film actress Stormy Daniels and his public clashes with former President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and embezzling settlement funds from four of his clients. His attorney Margaret Farrand of the Federal Public Defender’s Office said in a statement that she was glad the Ninth Circuit recognized the errors that wrongly increased Avenatti’s sentence. The US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment.
Avenatti had already been found guilty in two New York federal criminal trials for stealing advance payments for Daniels’ memoir and attempting to extort $25 million from Nike Inc. during settlement talks on behalf of another client. He was sentenced there to consecutive 24-month terms. The Ninth Circuit opinion also stated that the Los Angeles trial court should have recognized that Avenatti’s conviction for embezzling Daniels’ advance was similar enough to the other embezzlement cases in determining whether the sentences should run concurrently. The US Supreme Court recently declined to take his challenge to his conviction for the Daniels case.
The panel that ordered the sentence recalculation consisted of Circuit Judges Michelle T. Friedland and Roopali H. Desai and South Dakota US District Judge Karen E. Schreier, who sat by designation. Avenatti is represented by the Federal Public Defender’s Office.
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