Michael Avenatti Interrogates Stormy Daniels About Her Paranormal Visions At His Fraud Trial

The bitter legal battle between adult film star Stormy Daniels and disgraced former attorney Michael Avenatti wrapped up closing arguments Wednesday, and jury deliberations are taking place now.

This will conclude an unusual trial where Avenatti chose to represent himself for cross-examination of witnesses including his former office manager and Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, herself. However, Avenatti rested his case yesterday without testifying himself or calling any witnesses to the stand.

Avenatti has been charged with wire fraud and identity theft in relation to the theft of proceeds of Daniels’ memoir, Full Disclosure. He could face a combined sentence of up to 22 years if convicted of all charges.

Daniels is accusing Avenatti of stealing as much as $300,000 of proceeds from her and using it on both personal and business expenses for his struggling firm and coffee business. A central piece of evidence for the prosecution is a letter they say Avenatti forged and sent to Daniels’ literary agent, which caused the agent to send the payment funds into an account Avenatti owned.

The prosecution submitted text messages as evidence, which allegedly showed Avenatti repeatedly lying to Daniels about the state of the book payments. “She thought he was her advocate, and he told lies to try and cover it all up,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman said in his closing arguments for the prosecutions. “The defendant got tangled in his own web of lies. He got caught.”

Avenatti has claimed that the had permission to pocket the money, and while cross-examining Daniels last week he attempted to attack her credibility by getting her to admit in her testimony bizarre things she told him, like that she sees dead people, or that she has a doll that called her “mommy.”

Daniels first hired Avenatti to help her file suit against former President Donald Trump for reportedly trying to cover up an affair they had with a hush-money payment of $130,000. Avenatti quickly gained fame appearing on cable news shows during the case, but first began facing legal troubles in 2019.

He has already been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in that first case, where he allegedly attempted to extort Nike out of $25 million in New York by threatening to damage their reputation with insider company info if they didn’t pay up.