Something's Up: Avenatti Mysteriously Disappears From CNN
Clear the side of America’s milk cartons, folks: Michael Avenatti’s gone missing!
Yes, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, the man who’s appeared on CNN about as often as James Earl Jones’ voice, has suddenly vanished from the network who made the flamboyant lawyer the most famous litigator since Robert Shapiro.
According to Fox News — who Avenatti has a bit of a feud with — Avenatti hadn’t appeared on the network on Tuesday or Wednesday and had seen his appearances on the network greatly cut back.
“This would mark a stark contrast to the last few months when Avenatti essentially turned CNN’s green room into his second home,” Fox News’ Brian Flood wrote.
“Last week, Rich Noyes and Bill D’Agostino of the Media Research Center reported that from March 7 to May 15, Avenatti was interviewed on national television a whopping 147 times — with 74 of the appearances on Jeff Zucker’s CNN.”
Avenatti was back on the network Thursday, although his appearance seemed a bit more sober than his usual fare.
It also came during the same week in which CNN ran a story called “Are Michael Avenatti’s 15 minutes up?” Given that Michael Avenatti’s 15 minutes have been provided courtesy of CNN, the title of the segment seemed to answer its own question.
So, what’s the deal here? CNN seemed to posit that he had an “Icarus problem,” flying a bit too close to the media sun with wings a bit too waxy.
Avenatti, for his part, cited a family medical problem.
“I am scheduled to be on a number of networks, including CNN. I have been dealing with some medical issues for a close family member that I am caring for,” he said in a statement to Fox News.
However, another (more plausible) explanation is that the media hadn’t vetted Avenatti quite as stringently as they should have before anointing him as the next legal leader of #TheResistance.
There’s first Avenatti’s messy bankruptcy proceedings. On Tuesday, a judge ordered Avenatti to pay an attorney, who was allegedly sandbagged out of an initial $4.85 million bankruptcy settlement, $10 million for his trouble.
That wasn’t the first problem to arise out of Avenatti’s bankruptcy case. Legal documents revealed he hadn’t paid taxes on his law firm for three years despite earning $30 million and had only declared just over $400,000 in assets last December.
Yet, magically, it seemed that he was able to come up with $8 million to pay creditors when the Stormy Daniels case arose. This raised another question: who was paying Avenatti? If it turned out to be someone associated with the Democrats, that could raise ethical issues for the networks over disclosure.
Avenatti claimed his fees came from Ms. Daniels and crowdfunding. While I know pornography and crowdfunding can pay well, they don’t pay $8 million well. Of course, given that the $4.85 million that Avenatti apparently didn’t pay was calculated as part of the $8 million he allegedly had gotten at the same time he took on the Daniels case, that means maybe the money was all illusory to begin with — which raises a whole lot of other issues for Avenatti, considering the legal documents he filed in the case.
I know popular culture teaches us that saviors can come from unlikely places and that rogues can sometimes become just the hero that you need. There is, in fact, a movie opening this weekend detailing the origin story of the most famous of these fictional archetypes.
Here’s a spoiler alert, however: Michael Avenatti is not Han Solo. Stormy Daniels is not Princess Leia. “Star Wars” is fiction and these aren’t the sleazeballs you’re looking for. From all available evidence, CNN’s come (at a late hour, it must be noted) to this conclusion. When you’ve lost Jeff Zucker, you’ve lost the war.
Cheer up though, liberals. I’m sure some minor issue or person will come along and CNN will claim it will end Donald Trump. Much like the swallows returning to Capistrano, there will always be a porn star or an idiot drunkard low-level campaign staffer or perfectly justified DOJ firing to fill up 24 hours of non-stop coverage of the run-up to the impeachment which will never happen. It just may not involve a very broke, very bald ambulance chaser. I hope you can cope.
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