WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti’s appeal of his conviction for attempting to extort the sportswear company Nike.
The court upheld Avenatti’s racketeering and fraud convictions.
In the brief injunction, the court noted that conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh did not participate in the decision.
There was no explanation, but one possible reason is that Avenatti was also involved in Kavanaugh’s controversial confirmation hearing, in which she represented one of several women who made claims of sexual misconduct against the nominee decades ago. Kavanaugh denied all allegations.
Avenatti was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for Nike’s extortion scheme. He apologized at the sentencing, saying he was “deeply humiliated.”
The case arose in 2019 when Avenatti represented a Los Angeles youth basketball coach who alleged Nike made illegal payments to high school students. Around the same time, Avenatti faced millions of dollars in judgments and was evicted from his law firm.
During conversations with Nike lawyers, Avenatti pressured the company to not only pay his client, but also to hire him and another lawyer to conduct an internal corporate investigation into the matter. If that were not the case, he would have made the allegations public, he reportedly said.
Avenatti was charged with two counts of racketeering and one count of fraud under a federal law that targets illegal kickbacks by requiring people to provide “honest services.” A jury found him guilty on all three counts.
An appeals court upheld the convictions.
The Supreme Court has expressed skepticism about the scope of the honest services fraud statute in previous cases, including a ruling last year in which it threw out the conviction of an aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Avenatti has regularly made headlines over the years. One of his former clients was adult film star Stormy Daniels, whom he represented in her attempt to void a non-disclosure agreement she signed regarding her alleged sexual encounter with former President Donald Trump.
Trump is currently on trial on charges that he broke New York law by making so-called hush money payments to Daniels.
The Nike case isn’t Avenatti’s only legal problem. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for defrauding clients of millions of dollars and to four years in prison for stealing money from Daniels. Avenatti is currently incarcerated in a federal prison in California, with a scheduled release date of August 2035.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
