Anyone who’s been following the ongoing legal battle brought by Stormy Daniels against President Donald Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen has noticed that Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, has discussed the case on television quite a bit. Cohen’s lawyer noticed it too, and submitted to the court a list of 55 appearances made by Daniels and/or Avenatti regarding the case.
The list was attached to a filing submitted Tuesday night, in response to Avenatti’s claim that Cohen has not sufficiently provided evidence that there’s a criminal investigation against him that overlapped with the Daniels case. Avenatti claimed that an April 13 declaration by Cohen’s lawyer Brent Blakely relied on hearsay in the form of news reports to claim that there was an investigation.
In response, Blakely and Trump attorney Charles Harder pointed out in a joint filing on Tuesday that in fact Blakely based his declaration on his own information.
“This position is absurd,” the filing said. “Mr. Blakely’s declaration, which is based on his personal knowledge and not merely what has been reported by the
media, confirms that the April 9 FBI raid sought documentation related to the payment Mr. Cohen made to Plaintiff, which is at issue in this action.”
The argument went on to say how not only did Blakely provide evidence based on his own knowledge, Avenatti himself has knowledge that a current criminal investigation of Cohen is related to the Daniels case. To illustrate this, they pointed out that Avenatti himself attended a hearing related to the investigation, and spoke to the media afterwards, saying that the documents seized by the FBI in that matter are “of utmost importance” to the Daniels case.
A separate declaration by Blakely in support of this argument mentioned a number of times Avenatti discussed the investigation and its connection to his client’s case, including links to video or transcripts. As an attached exhibit, the declaration listed 55 instances where either Daniels, Avenatti, or both went on TV since March 7, 2018. Of those times, 53 were just Avenatti.
In response to this, Avenatti continued to ignore that Blakely’s initial declaration was based on his own knowledge. As for his televised comments? He dismissed them as “irrelevant” and hearsay.
[Image via MSNBC screengrab]
