Former Stormy Daniels attorney and convicted felon Michael Avenatti on Tuesday accused the porn star of engaging in “falsification of business records, wire fraud, and fraudulent transfers” to defraud former President Donald Trump out of money she allegedly received from a documentary.
Avenatti’s shocking statement, released from behind bars, came as his former client took the stand to testify against Trump in his business records trial on Tuesday, in which Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records – the same charge Avenatti accuses Daniels of.
He claimed to have been contacted in June 2023 by a producer named Sarah Gibson about participating in a documentary about Daniels. IMBD lists the director of the 2024 documentary Stormy on Peacock as Sarah Gibson.
“I was particularly interested in knowing whether the project was going to be legitimate and fair, or instead, a puff piece designed to put Daniels in a favorable light while ignoring facts and trashing me and Donald Trump. I wanted nothing to do with the project if it was the latter,” he wrote near the top of his statement.
Attorney Michael Avenatti, who is representing an alleged R. Kelly victim, speaks to reporters at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago after the R&B singer entered a not guilty plea to all 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, Monday morning, Feb. 25, 2019. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
Avenatti said his first question to Gibson was if Daniels was being paid, adding that if she was, he did not want to participate because he felt like that would indicate it “would be one-sided.”
The incarcerated attorney, who was sentenced to 14 years in 2022 after being convicted of stealing millions from his clients, charged that Gibson admitted to him a plan where Daniels would be paid in secret for her role in the documentary because she owed Trump a large sum on a judgment he had been trying to collect:
Ms. Gibson told me that Daniels was being paid for the documentary, but that because she owed Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars from a judgment Trump was trying to collect from Daniels, they – Daniels, Gibson and others – had come up with a plan that would allow Daniels to be secretly paid, while at the same time keeping the payment(s) from Trump and his attorneys.
Avenatti further claimed Gibson “told me that they had fictionally ‘optioned’ the rights to Daniels’ book and then routed the money Daniels demanded through a fabricated ‘trust’ that had been set-up in the name of Daniels’ daughter – all to hide the money from Trump and avoid paying the judgment.”
Avenatti said Gibson was “admitting” engagement in “multiple overt criminal acts” during the alleged conversation:
A woman I had never met or spoken to before was admitting to me, on a recorded line, that Daniels, she and others had engaged in multiple overt criminal acts (state and federal), including falsification of business records, wire fraud, and fraudulent transfers, all in an effort to defraud Trump and avoid paying him what he was legally due. Due to the fraud, I declined to participate in the documentary.
The disgraced former attorney said, “there is every reason to believe” what Gibson allegedly told him on the afternoon of June 25, 2023, is true and wondered how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could “possibly rely on the testimony of Daniels,” alleging she is “guilty of fraud and recently falsifying business records to cover up a crime.”
“Further, will DA Bragg or others be promptly filing criminal charges against Daniels or others involved in this scheme?” He wrote.
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