AVENATTI INDICTED - TWICE!

Lawyer Michael Avenatti was indicted twice today as Rumpole made his way back from Wisconsin, through Atlanta, and finally Miami (Thank you Delta for the ATL-Miami- upgrade. We needed it.).

The Feds in California indicted Avenatti for bank and wire fraud for converting client funds to pay his personal expenses.
The Feds in New York, in a what is shaping up to be a wild case, indicted Avenatti for attempting to extort twenty million dollars from Nike in exchange for Avenatti not revealing a high-school and college basketball-shoe scandal (whatever that is).

Wanna know a secret?
The unindicted co-conspirator in the NY/Nike case is none other that California celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos who has represented Collin Kapernick, Michael Jackson, and Wynona Ryder among others. We count Mark Geragos as a friend (not of Rumpole but of hsgqtiep shabvxcok who we are in real life and no, that's not a word scramble so relax), but we have not had a chance to speak with him.

Proof that truth is stranger than fiction.
There is a lesson to be learned here with Avenatti and it comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson and it is  this- when you strike at the President your house must be clean as a whistle.  Within the last year Avenatti has been arrested for domestic violence, had accounts frozen for unpaid back taxes, and been evicted from the building where his law office was for unpaid rent. You cannot be in financial distress and fight POTUS. Because as we all remember, Ralph Waldo Emerson said "When you strike at the king, you must kill him." 



WELCOME BACK
Very quietly and under the Rumpole radar, Judge Miguel De La O, a blog friend and adequate fantasy football participant, has wrangled a three player trade that ended up with him leaving civil and returning to criminal court where he has been missed.  The judge traded summary judgement arguments and fights over interrogatories for suppression hearings and JOA motions, which any well heeled and intelligent jurist would do. Welcome back judge. 
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