Stormy Daniels‘ attorney Michael Avenatti has been on the rampage early Monday against Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, the morning after receiving a cease and desist letter from Cohen’s lawyer in response to statements in the 60 Minutes interview linking his client to threats.
As reported earlier, Cohen lawyer Brent Blakely sent Avenatti and Daniels a cease and desist letter after it was insinuated that Cohen may have been behind a parking lot threat in Las Vegas in 2011, where Daniels was supposedly told to “Leave Trump alone” and “Forget the story.”
60 Minutes said that in May 2011 Daniels agreed to sell the Donald Trump affair story to InTouch magazine for $15,000 dollars, but that the story was squashed because Cohen threatened to sue. Daniels said that two weeks later she herself was threatened in Vegas.
The cease and desist letter called for Avenatti and Daniels to stop making “further false and defamatory statements” about Cohen, and to apologize for what was said on 60 Minutes.
Not only has Avenatti not apologized, he had already ignored the letter when he tweeted that threats were Cohen’s “modus operandi,” and already said “We’re just getting started” on revealing “a whole host of evidence” that Cohen was involved in silencing and threatening Stormy Daniels. He then tripled down by calling Cohen “thuggish” and sharing a 2015 Daily Beast article to support that claim.
“Want to know what Michael Cohen is capable of when working on Donald Trump’s behalf? Read this article that details his thuggish tactics in detail,” he tweeted. “His legally baseless claim that there is ‘no such thing as spousal rape’ was also a nice touch. #basta”
In the article Avenatti shared, Cohen is quoted as saying, “[Y]ou can’t rape your spouse.”
“It is true. You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law,” Cohen said. The article’s author goes on to say how this is false.
President Trump, for his part, seemed to address the Stormy Daniels interview and the reaction to it indirectly Monday morning.
[Images via Mark Wilson/Getty Images and CBS News screengrab]