Adult-film star Stormy Daniels’s attorney Michael Avenatti mocked President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Friday for “whining” in his attempts to bar him from an ongoing case.
In a court document filed Friday, Cohen suggested Avenatti was attempting to create a “carnival atmosphere” in court, condemning the attorney for releasing Cohen’s leaked confidential financial records to the public.
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Avenatti defended his tactics on MSNBC with Lawrence O’Donnell, saying Cohen is only complaining because his team has been making “considerable inroads” on his client’s defamation case against Trump’s lawyer.
“Of course they want to bar me from the courtroom in the proceeding because we’ve made considerable inroads over the last eight weeks,” Avenatti said. “We’ve disclosed some damaging, accurate information relating to Michael Cohen and his activities. And we’re not going anywhere.”
Avenatti last week released confidential records related to Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, which the longtime Trump attorney previously used to pay Daniels in exchange for her silence regarding an alleged affair with Trump.
Lawyers for Cohen claimed that move, along with multiple recent TV appearances where Avenatti has allegedly been “smearing” his opponent in the interests of self-promotion, should bar him from the court.
A hearing for Cohen is scheduled next week, the next step in a criminal probe of his financial dealings that led to federal investigators raiding his Cohen’s home and offices in April.
Avenatti has asked to participate in the case in order to ensure any communications Cohen had with his client remain confidential. Cohen’s lawyers have asked the court to bar him in part because they say he only has a “tangential relationship” to the case, which is running parallel to Daniels’s case.