The Press Box - A Nutty Avenatti Week | Damage Control

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

Michael Avenatti was charged this week with trying to extort Nike for millions of dollars (1:59). How did the lawyer go from a rising political star to being hated by both the left and right (6:46)? Also, Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, settled a case the state of Oklahoma had brought against them for allegedly igniting the opioid crisis with the creation of OxyContin (19:49). Hosts: Kate Knibbs and Justin Charity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. This week on The Ringer.com, it's 1999 movies week. Already up on the site, we've released parts one and two of the top 50 movies of 1999. And later this week, Shea Serrano is writing about The Matrix, Andrew Grudadero is writing about cruel intentions, and Rob Parvilla argues why being John Malkovich is the best movie of that year. You can also check out the Big Picture podcast to hear Sean Fennacy, Amanda Dobbins, and Chris Ryan share their top five favorite movies from 1999. Check out those articles on the ringer.com and listen to the big picture wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibs.

Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets, excites and divides us. This week, Purdue Pharmaceuticals reached a $270 million settlement with the state of Oklahoma, which means there won't be a trial for the maker of OxyContin in that state. We're going to talk about what this means for the overdose crisis at large. But first, we're going to discuss the arrest of Michael Avanati, the high-powered attorney and anti-Trump resistance figurehead who apparently tried to extort $20 million from Nike before he got swept up, along with Mark Garagos of all people, in a federal sting operation. Three words, Kate. This fucking guy.

Who among us hasn't tried to extort Nike really? First, let's meet our legal sharks. He's the porn lawyer who might just run for present, Michael Avanati. Sorry if I'm being nervous. I hate being on TV. Michael Avanati is one of the more complicated, dynamic grifters of the post-Trump moment, I would say. There's a lot going on with him. Yeah, he's a lot going on with him in what feels like actually a relatively short span of human history.

So Avanati is a high-powered attorney. He represented Stormy Daniels in her unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. He's also represented sexual assault survivors and high-profile complaints against Brett Kavanaugh and most recently R. Kelly. And actually, Stormy Daniels fired Avanotti earlier this month. After having already accused Avanadi in public, a couple months back of filing the defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump against her wishes and also Stomby Daniels accused Avanadi of speaking on her behalf repeatedly without permission, which is like a calling card I feel like of Avanati of being on cable news and tweeting.

He seems to love to speak. Right, right. For a guy who, again, he's an attorney. He represents other people. And Stormy Daniels has done interviews and stuff like that, but it seems like there were warning signs with this guy. When Avanotti made himself the face of Stormy Daniels, you know, very public feud with Donald Trump.

But Stormy Daniels fired Avinati, and it's been downhill from there. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Los Angeles charged Avanotti with a great variety of crimes. chiefly with attempting to extort $20 million from Nike by blackmailing the company and the company's chairman

Phil Knight and Abadadi was arrested in Manhattan he quickly bonded out I think his bond is like $300,000 he bonded out he assembled a press conference naturally as one does and the press conference

shocked if he didn't right and the press conference is him swearing by his innocence, attacking Nike, sort of characterizing all of this as Nike being corrupt. And basically Avanotti had gathered information about Nike paying and basically like a recruitment scheme for college basketball players. And now, of course, Michael Avanotti, who is out on Bond, is tweeting, tweeting through it as what does.

He is tweeting up a storm he is. I just feel like not since Anthony Scaramucci has a popular figure risen so ecstatically, only to fall so catastrophically. And I want to talk about how exactly Michael Avanetti became such a famous guy in the first place. He's, like, there are templates for him, right? The celebrity attorney. Gloria Al-Rad. Right.

Garigos. Yeah. Also. Johnny Cochran. Right. But something about this guy's off. And I want to talk about the ways in which he is almost like an extremist case of this kind of public figure, of the crusading. Let's do it. Yeah.

So when did you first hear about Avanotti? Because I first found out about him through the Stormy Daniels thing. Right. That was, it's so weird to talk about this this way because Stormy Daniels is talking about the president paying her own. off, intimidating her. And yet, I can't help but characterize Stormy Daniels case against Donald Trump as a

breakout moment for Michael Avanotti, like in that sort of Hollywood entertainment sense. And I feel like that's when most people first heard of Michael Avinati, right? It's him taking on Stormy Daniels case and very quickly becoming this media attack dog

figure. And he seemed very vital, I think, in that moment, because you know, taking on Donald Trump is interesting in the press because Trump is so good at the press. He's so good and he's so eager to troll people in the press and just like talk shit. And so Avanadi, I think, among people who don't like Donald Trump, Avanotti was initially this very vital figure because he would do the interviews and he would send the tweets and he would he would talk shit. And so it's Stormy Daniels too. They just seemed like this, they seemed like this very vital anti-Trump tag team.

I thought he always seemed like a clown, but that didn't necessarily bother me because I was like, you know, fight fire with fire. Like fight a fucking buffoon with a, another, a bald buffoon. A bald fit buffoon. Yeah. So his pretty evident slimyness, I thought maybe that could work in his favor initially. Yeah. I'm curious, though, what about him? What quality or what thing first tipped you off to Avanotti being a buffoon? Like, what about him? Well, first of all, like, name one celebrity attorney who isn't. Like, I was just pre-de- or, you know. But even in contrast with, like, Johnny Cocker. Like, I'm trying to, what's the difference between the way in which Johnny Cochran is, you know, a little overboard versus Avinati? Because I feel like even then, there's something.

Avinati has these... I don't know. I honestly... I guess people hated Johnny Cochran in his time, too. A lot of people hated him. I didn't really dwell on Avinati too much back when he was just Stormy Daniel's lawyer. He just seemed kind of like a sleaze ball because he was constantly trying to make the case about him, I thought, in a weird way. And trying to play up his own animosity towards Donald Trump, which I didn't think was necessarily helpful.

to his client, but it was helpful to his reputation. Right. That's probably what the red flag was. Right. Yeah. That's what the red flag was, but it's interesting because I also feel like that was his appeal simultaneously. Because that's true of so many, I swear, it's true of so many people who end up being these resistance figurehead people, like Avanati gradually became, where on the one hand, sure, somebody is mounting like a righteous campaign against the indignities of Donald Trump.

But it seems like so many of those people are the worst kind of media, like the worst kind of press hounds and the worst kind of narcissist. And that as much as I think you're right, right? Like going toe to toe with Donald Trump and the press requires some level of unsavoriness. Yeah. But it's also demoralizing to be like, oh, God, it is. The end of American democracy is just a cage match where we pit different kinds of narcissists against each other. I don't really enjoy watching that. No, that's a pretty accurate summary, though.

But it feels so vital to why people liked, not only like Davenati, but I do think that there was very, very briefly this moment where Trump's critics, right? And I'm talking about a very specific kind of Trump critic. I'm talking about the sort of Trump critic who until last week was obsessed with Robert Mueller, Robert Mueller. And yeah, those people seem to want him to enter the realm of politics, maybe run for president, stuff like that. Did people really want him to run for president? Here's the thing. I think a specific, like I said, a specific kind of person wanted him to run for president. I think now that he's clearly blown his gasket, I think a lot of conservative publications pretend that,

Michael Avinati at one point was a Democratic frontrunner, which is nuts. That was never true. Yeah, there's 20 frontrunners. There's 20 frontrunners right now. Mike Ravel had a better shot at being president than Avinati ever did. Oh, for sure. But, yeah, there was a brief period in which Michael Avinati being this Aggie, extremely online, dumbass, was good, actually. Okay, but then what happened?

Well, apparently he thought that Nike would give a shit that he was accusing. Like, this whole extortion plan seems so poorly thought out because Nike has already weathered insane amounts of bad press. They employed child slaves in sweatshops. Allegedly, maybe I should say, anyways, they're basically scandal proof. Like, what could take down Nike, really? Certainly not this. So it's like, why are you trying to extort a pretty much unextortable company? I mean, you ask why.

Money. Again, once you're one of the few people who has come off looking relatively good in a prolonged feud with Donald Trump, like, I imagine if I came into the public eye the way Michael Avanati did, I too would be. way too high off of my own supply and be like, I single-handedly can take down Nike and or like get $20 million for myself personally in the process. Why not start more reasonable? Why not try to extort underarmor?

Yeah. Right, right. Puma. It's like, right. Don't go straight for Nike. Boxing. You work your way up through amateur, you fight in the Olympics.

You know what I mean? You're right. I think that might have worked better for him. Way better. Way better for him. I also, before this, right, it's easy to look at Avanadi being literally arrested and probably going to jail now and being like, well, this is Avanati's downfall. But Avanati's interesting because he, again, he debuts this resistance, spectacular attorney person. And I think he gets complicated really quickly during the Christine Blazzi Ford saga, during Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation here.

Michael Avanotti emerged, I would say, in a ultimately quite unwelcome fashion. It's funny because I think he first revealed this on Twitter, which is a theme with this guy, that he too was representing a woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. And I think a lot of people wanted to have a serious conversation about the woman he was representing. But that was when I think Avanotti, like he did in the Stormy Daniels case, but in a way that just rubbed a lot more people the wrong way, immediately made himself the face of his own client. And again, in a case about sexual assault,

and also in a case where I think people were really publicly struggling with the idea of Brett Kavanaugh's accusers getting to tell their side of the story and be believed. And I think that's when, I just remember specifically watching an interview with Lindsay Graham because there was a period during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings where the Republicans did seem a lot more ambivalent. They were like, I don't know, should we ditch this guy?

Like, maybe we can just nominate someone else. And I remember later on watching, I think it was like a hallway interview in the Senate with Lindsey Graham. He was like, yeah, I was conflicted. And then when Michael Avanotti showed up and started tweeting, I was like, wait a minute, fuck this. Like, fuck this guy. This is getting out of control.

Oh, my, I didn't know that. That's... See, this is why it's hard. Avinati is... Since he's a clown, it's very tempting and easy to, like, laugh at him. And I have laughed at him, and I've enjoyed it. He did a real disservice to people who deserve to be heard and given a fair shot at justice. And so that, I think that sort of complicates the situation because it's...

I mean, it really sucks that he was... such poor representation for people who really needed it. And he ended up hurting these causes he purported to be championing. Yes. He also seems very instructive in the distinction between a person who's good at getting press and a person who is good at managing press. Because that guy could get headlines for days, for instance, by getting arrested. But yeah, he really seemed to lose the plot in terms of,

getting press in a way that actually like helped people and like served the basic interests of what he even was brought into all of these situations to do. And it was only recently during I don't know if you watched surviving R. Kelly. Did you watch Surviving R. I didn't.

I know a lot of the story already. Like I followed the R. Kelly reporting out of Chicago because I'm from Chicago. I felt like I already thought he was guilty so I just, I couldn't really stomach watching it, to be honest. Avanadi shortly after

surviving R. Kelly. Is he in it? No, no, no, he's not in it, but he specifically, um, was shortly after it had finished airing, he announced that he, uh, he'd been hired by a client who has

like relatively new video evidence of illegal sexual activity, apparently related to underage sex by R. Kelly. And so I think that that was a brief window where, because again, in the immediate wake of surviving R. Kelly, I think a lot of people were agonizing about, like, what are we supposed to do about R. Kelly? What are we supposed to do about this guy? It seems like the evidence, at least journalistically, is super abundant that this guy is. is a predator, but legally he seems untouchable. And so Avanadi emerging in that case and being like, I might be able to take down R. Kelly seemed like a moment where maybe Avanadi could turn it around and stop being a dumbass who was maybe going to launch some vanity run for president and actually be a useful celebrity attorney.

Or in that case, I guess, anti-celebrity attorney. But now that seems to have been turned on his head because Avanati is going to be on trial, possibly. Well, whoever had that video, hopefully they'll get better representation. Right. I get hung up on Avanati as a phenomenon because he seems so emblematic. A very specific sort of post-2016 election post-Trump figure. he's almost like a fever dream person. Like I really do think of him in the same breath

as someone like Anthony Scaramucci where it's like, listen, there are always people in the orbit of, like a President Obama or President Bush who become maybe a sort of microcelebrity in some strange way. But the Trump people all seem, the people who force their way into Trump's orbit

all seem like they belong in the carnival. And it doesn't matter whether they're pro-Trump people like Scaramucci or whether they're anti-Trump people like Avanati. They just have this carnivalistic quality to them that mirrors Trump himself. And I would like to know how we get rid of this. Can they all be implicated in FBI things? I mean, apparently they're just all going to go to jail. Like, I guess my final thought on Avanati is that it's, like,

darkly fitting that, of course, the lawyer, the most high-profile lawyer pecking at Trump is going to prison before him. Yeah. Yes. Probably. This is true. It's like him and Michael Cohen are going to be. Jail.

It's wild how quickly it all fell up. part for him in terms of the Nike case. Because I believe that the recordings of Avanadi, like all of the stuff that is key to why he is arrested, happened recently. So again, this doesn't feel like a thing where these prosecutors were building a case over a long period of time. It's like, you know that Avanadi did all this shit at like the post peak of his public profile.

And it's just like all of it reeks of a guy. who got way too juiced off of the notoriety of being somebody who Donald Trump tweets about routinely. Should have gone after Under Armour. One company that has profited massively off your pain is Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the makers of OxyContin, which is owned by the Sackler family, seen here not giving a shit. Our next topic is also about whether. someone's going to have their day in court or not. Avonati is kind of fun to talk about. This is really not, but I think it's important to talk about.

So this week, Purdue Pharmaceuticals and its owners, the Sackler family, settled a case that the state of Oklahoma had brought against them for $270 million. It's pretty large sum of money, but kind of a drop in the bucket for this company because they're insanely profitable. The reason why Oklahoma had, you know, made a case against them was because there is evidence that this company and this family had a pretty vital role in the overdose epidemic in America. There is documentation that the company deliberately misled people about how addictive their drugs, including oxycontin, were in order to make more money. So it's pretty despicable. So that influenced doctors to over-prescribe opiates. And it also, you know, they sort of pushed this message that they weren't as addictive or dangerous as they were. And all of this fueled a massive wave of addiction in America that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

When you talk about the misleading about how addictive, like over how long of a period of time are we talking about? I have to look at the documentation, but it was for, it was like, when the drug was introduced until recently. They eventually made the medications tamper-proof in response to criticism that they were, like, too easy to be abused. But they pushed the line that it was pretty safe and, you know, doctors should just be prescribing these medications. They took a letter to the editor from a medical journal and sort of used.

that, even though it was later debunked, they used that as evidence that they claimed that it wasn't addictive. It was a whole, like, they clearly knew what they were doing, which is why holding

this company and this family accountable means so much to so many people. I was talking to some friends about this and we were saying, like, one of the defining things about being a millennial, one of the actual ones and of being of the younger generation is that you probably know someone who died of an overdose. So seeing this family, I don't know, when I saw that this settlement had happened,

I felt angry that they were able to throw money at this problem. But this is just the beginning. Like there are 35 other state cases that are still remaining. And then there are federal cases that are combining 1,600 other suits against them. So this might be the beginning of like basically a financial bloodletting for this company because how much money, I mean, I don't know what 270 million times like all that is. I don't know how much money exactly they have. They might end up being in a situation where to not have all of this evidence presented against them publicly, they end up bankrupting themselves. I don't know the financials.

But I don't know. I still wish that it had gone to trial, even though this $270 million is being used to set up a center to study addiction. There are going to be good things that come from this settlement, but I feel like they only settled because they knew they were going to lose. And so it's kind of frustrating to see them not be able to lose. It is weird to me hearing so frequently from politicians, for instance, about those. opioid crisis. And it nonetheless feeling like a very low energy diffused political priority. And I don't really understand why that is. Because it's not like it's a public health and commercial crisis that there is some grand partisan disagreement over, right? Yeah. And so you would think that the

channels of accountability in a case like this would be more clear than they are than they seem. But Maybe I'm just like misreading politics as a phenomenon for addressing urgent problems in America. I don't know. I think the fact that there are now so many lawsuits against this company is definitely a really good sign that the legal system is trying to hold the people who are actually responsible accountable instead of like the war on drugs nonsense where they're focusing on low level. Right. dealers who are addicts themselves. Like it is, it is good, but it all feels it's like, it feels like too little too late in so many ways. Another thing that has happened recently with this is that the Sacklers are like huge donors to the arts.

They're like really, really big philanthropic name. Basically, it's insane. Like if you go to the museums in New York, it's hard to find a museum that doesn't have a Sackler connection. The Guggenheim here and then the Tate Modern and a few other museums in England have publicly cut ties and have said they won't accept new donations that happened this week too. So that's... Have there been like big, okay, but have there been, they're cutting ties? Has there been big public action against those museums? Yeah.

Okay. So recently there was a lot of demonstrations at the Guggenheim. I know. Like, people went in the museum and then dropped, like, placards that were like, fuck this blood money. Right, right. So I think that's heartening because it's like a sign that public protests are having an effect and, like, spooking some of these institutions. But not totally, like, Columbia and a few other New York-based institutions that have taken a ton of money from the Sacklers are, like, reviewing it. Yeah. So they're not ready.

I have a feeling there'll be more. Yeah, I was going to say, I thought Columbia University was a hotbed of activism and rabble-rousing, according to one New York Times columnist, Barry Weiss, but what do I know? Oh, yeah, so the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum, those are the ones that have had big protests. And they dropped slips of white paper from the gallery of the Guggenheim that said, quoting Richard Sackler, who used to run Purdue Pharma. talking about how, like, they would get so many prescriptions to Oxycontin. It would bury the competition, which, like, takes on a very dark meaning. Right. So that also is a thing where I feel good about it, but also wish there was more happening.

And it's also sort of amazing to me that it's just taken so long for institutions to realize that it's disgusting to take money from these. people. So I don't know. Do you think that they're empty gestures or do you think they're... Well, do you mean cutting ties? Yeah. I mean, the way you're describing the Sackler's influence, it feels like they are a source of a lot of money.

So I don't know. I mean, given that it's just responsive to protest, it's easy to look at it and think, oh, well, this is just the natural public relation strategy, right? But also, I don't even know how much that matters, right? Like, I feel slightly better about going to museums and galleries in New York if they don't take white-collar drug money. Yeah. Right. You know what I mean?

My answer is yes and no. It is largely symbolic, but it's also probably important and righteous. Same. Yeah. I agree. Also, I do think, you know, I think. I think that it is a PR strategy, but they also are going to take a big financial hit. Yeah.

They are passing up huge sums of money, so it's, you know, they're having to walk the walk. So I guess it's not empty. I wish they had done it a long time ago, though. My hope is that at some point, in one of these cases, Purdue, will have to go to trial. Right. And I'm hoping that because I think that they're going to lose, but I don't. I don't know whether I'm being too optimistic. I mean, companies love settling.

You know what I mean? I don't know. Somebody, I've worked in public relations. I've worked with, like, large companies. I've worked in, like, crisis communications. It feels companies like to settle things and have gag orders and non-disclosures and pay large sums of money to avoid losing even larger sums of money. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I don't know. It's hard. I look at something like this. same way that I look at, like, the Boeing shit that's going on, where they have, like, failing planes falling out of the sky, right? It's like, how do you imagine that ending? That probably ends with...

Settlement, yeah. Yeah, that ends with, oh, maybe a couple of national governments being skittish about Boeing contracts for a few years, a bunch of settlements, and all of us flying Boeing to L.A. With Boeing, too, it's like, how many airplane manufacturers are there even? Right. It's not like there's this great wealth to choose from. Right. Like if Boeing, yeah, right.

Like if Boeing loses a bunch of cases and then goes under. Yeah. It's right. That's like a big, that's like cratering the airplane manufacturing mark field or whatever. Right. I think that's why stuff like this feels a little cynical and overwhelming, right? It's because you, yeah, you know, these companies, like all of these companies, Boeing, like, Like, all of Purdue, there are industries that clearly are built around the idea that you have these big public risks, be it, like, prescribing medications or flying on an airplane.

And managing even the most scandalous, like, frightful revelations like this is just part of the business model. Yeah. I think I'll be able to tell whether or not they would lose if they were brought to trial based on. So, like, they settled out, but there are still other pharmaceutical companies who will be brought to trial in this Oklahoma case, including Johnson and Johnson apparently has a history of risking jury trials. So that we might be able to see what unfolds there. And that will give us a sign of, like, which way the wind is blowing for these other. cases, we'll have to see. The other reason why I have mixed emotions, like, I don't know, like a few years ago,

I think I would have been overjoyed that the Sackler family was facing all of this legal action, and now I feel kind of mixed emotions about it because it just seems like what we really need to do. I mean, this is part of what needs to be done, but aside from punishing the actors, that Like, that's not going to actually fix the crisis that's already in motion. Yeah. And I guess it just seems like a small part of what we really need to be doing because what we really need to be doing is, like, changing drug policy going forward.

And it will be easier to make those policies stick if, like, companies like Purdue pharmaceuticals aren't pretending that dangerous, addictive medications are something you should be casually popping when you have a cramp or something. But yeah, I just, I don't know. I'm feeling like at this point, the punishment aspect just isn't as important as, like, radically changing the approach to people who are already addicted. Right, yeah. It's all part of the grotesque tapetry that is health care in the United States of America. I know.

It's wild. And like, because there are so many, so few really, really prominent pharmaceutical companies, it's like, I don't even know if I want Purdue pharmaceuticals to go bankrupt because now they're like developing antidotes to opiate overdoses and stuff like that. I'm like, who's going to step up? It's just basically, this is an anti-monopoly podcast. That's just one part of it. All right, I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibbs. Thanks for listening. You'll hear from us again in two weeks.