Mark Penn: Given That Stormy Daniels Has Admitted She's Not Paying Her Lawyer -- Who Is Paying Him? It's Time For Camera-Hungry Lawyer Michael Avennati to Come Clean Who's Paying His Bills

And shouldn't the media at least pretend some interest in this question?

Unless they all know Avenatti's just a front for yet another Democrat political operation with deep pockets and are simply active partisans actively colluding with the op.

Even Mark Penn -- Mark Penn! former Clinton pollster Mark Penn! -- seems to think that this question needs answering.

So exactly who is paying Michael Avenatti? And is he a lawyer, an opposition researcher, a journalist, or a campaign operative?

He wants to make the discussion all about where Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal attorney, got his money but, to have clean hands, Avenatti needs to come forward with exactly who is financing his operation, who his sources were for detailed banking information, and whether he really is an attorney solely representing Stormy Daniels or just using her as cover to wage a political operation.

From the beginning, this has been fishy. Daniels's previous lawyer advised her to stick to her agreements. In contrast, Avenatti okayed her violating with impunity her non-disclosure agreement on "60 Minutes" despite a binding arbitration judgment against her. She acknowledged on Twitter that she is not paying for her lawyer. So who is? And did he indemnify her against all multimillion-dollar penalties?

It took a long time and even a court battle to find out that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the Fusion GPS dossier, a fact that was disclosed only after the damage was done, as former British spy and the dossier's compiler, Christopher Steele, had already created a vast echo chamber as though the material he was peddling had been verified in some way, which of course, it never was. Now Avenatti is being allowed to repeat this same process, mixing truths with half truths and evading accountability.

...

[T]his release of a "report" by Avenatti also raises the question of where and how did he get this detailed financial information because he didn’t find it on Google. This is the kind of information that would have been known only by the Treasury Department, his banks or by prosecutors, raising some serious questions about what kind of operation Avenatti is running. Is there a team of people digging this up? Are they paying off sources? Is Fusion GPS involved? Are there political donors behind making this campaign work? He can't be both an attorney and then participate as an officer of the court in trafficking illegally obtained information.

The more you peel back the onion, the more Cohen and Avenatti seem alike. Both are fixers who bend every rule they can get away with. Fairly or unfairly, Cohen is being put under the microscope and we can rest assured that every payment in or out will be fully scrutinized by law enforcement. But Avenatti can't be given a pass on these issues. Americans are entitled to know just who this guy is, who is writing his checks and whether he legally obtained his information.

Note that part about indemnification -- Stormy Daniels has to pay Trump the money back plus more (I think) if she breaches. Her first lawyer told her not to breach. This one says "Yeah, breach."

Now, this only makes sense as legal advice if he was willing to personally cover her losses for breaching, or if there was some deep-pocket backer willing to do so.

So: Which is it? Is Avennati a terrible attorney or is he backing her play or, more likely, is a Democrat billionaire backing her play?

Penn even notes that Avenatti has been given an "unfettered perch" on cable TV -- mostly CNN -- to peddle his possibly-criminal leaks and his conspiracy theories, and yet no one in these allegedly truth-seeking operations has asked him a simple question: Who's paying you? If you're representing Stormy Daniels, why are you on and on about Russia?

And if these tax lien records posted by a Vegas trial lawyer are real, then it seems unlikely that Avenatti is so flush with cash that he can work the cable news courtrooms 24/7 for a stripper/pornographer on a pro-boner basis:

Treasury is in fact investigating to determine if Avennati received the Cohen records (both the ones about the actual Michael Cohen and the ones about other Michael Cohens, which he stupid and possibly defamatorilly claimed were Michael Cohen's) were in fact criminal leaks.

Rich Delmar, the general counsel for the Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General, said Wednesday that investigators want to know if the disclosures violated the Bank Secrecy Act.

That law allows the Treasury Department to collect information on suspicious bank transfers, subject to strict privacy provisions.

I have a source who says he knows for a fact that there is in fact a Deep State #Resistance leaker in Treasury.

But is the leaker giving Avenatti the research directly, or is it going to, I don't know, a pseudojournalistic smear-shop that's currently being financed to the tune of $50 million by ten Democrat backers, then passed to Avennati?

Oh, by the way: A friend points out that Fusion GPS has a notorious habit of confusing their target Michael Cohen with other Michael Cohens.

And then packaging up their defamatory errors into "reports" and "dossiers."

#WhoFundsAvennati?

posted by Ace of Spades at 04:29 PM

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