Breaking: Stormy Daniels' Lawyer Michael Avenatti Arrested for Domestic Violence
Michael Avenatti — who gained notoriety as the attorney for Stormy Daniels in her legal battle against President Donald Trump — has reportedly been arrested for felony domestic violence.
TMZ reported Wednesday that law enforcement sources told the celebrity news outlet that a woman filed a felony domestic violence report.
The sources said her face was “swollen and bruised.”
An official told The Associated Press on a condition of anonymity that police responded to a domestic violence incident Tuesday and took a report, but Avenatti was taken into custody on Wednesday.
The Los Angeles Police Department has since confirmed that Avenatti was arrested on “suspicion of domestic violence.”
We can confirm that today LAPD Detectives arrested Michael Avenatti on suspicion of domestic violence. This is an ongoing investigation and we will provide more details as they become available.
— LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) November 15, 2018
According to Fox News, he was able to post $50,000 bail and was released Wednesday evening.
Following his release, Avenatti told reporters the allegations against him were false and pledged he would be “fully exonerated.”
TMZ reported the confrontation between Avenatti and the woman happened at an exclusive apartment building in the Century City area of west Los Angeles.
The woman ran outside the building and security brought her back in.
Avenatti then showed up running into the building, chasing her, screaming, “She hit me first.” He angrily added, “This is bulls—, this is f—ing bulls—.”
A law enforcement source said Avenatti had kicked her out of the apartment on Tuesday, but she had returned on Wednesday to retrieve her things.
The woman had called police asking them to stand by in case things got heated with Avenatti.
Fox News reported in May that Avenatti’s estranged wife, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, described her husband in court papers as “hot tempered and used to having his way — when he doesn’t he gets extremely loud and verbally aggressive.”
She called him “emotionally abusive” and “harmful” to both her and their 3-year-old son, and requested an exclusion order, barring him from entering their Newport Beach residence out of fear he could cause physical harm.
“The purpose of these exclusion / exclusive use orders is intended to prevent acts of domestic violence and to provide for a separation of the persons involved for a period sufficient to enable them to seek a resolution of the cause of the violence,” court records read.
Avenatti may not only face domestic violence charges, but has been referred to the Department of Justice in relation to a client he represented during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In late October, Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley referred the attorney and his client Julie Swetnick to the DOJ for criminal investigation relating to a “potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress.”
A news release from the Judiciary Committee highlighted that Swetnick’s allegations about Kavanaugh, made in a sworn statement to the committee, had “serious credibility problems.” Swetnick claimed Kavanaugh was present at parties when there were gang rapes and that he was involved in spiking punch to make women more susceptible to sexual advances.
“In an October 1 interview with NBC News … Swetnick specifically and explicitly back-tracked or contradicted key parts of her sworn statement on these and other allegations,” the release read. “In subsequent interviews, Avenatti likewise cast serious doubt on or contradicted the allegations while insisting that he had thoroughly vetted his client.”
Following Grassley’s announcement of the criminal referral, NBC published a story noting that not only had the network not been able to corroborate Swetnick’s initial claims, but it “found other apparent inconsistencies in a second sworn statement from another woman whose statement Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bid to bolster Swetnick’s claims.”
Based on this reporting, Grassley made a second criminal referral to the DOJ regarding Avenatti.
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