Imprisoned attorney Michael Avenatti made headlines earlier this year when the one-time fierce foe of Donald Trump expressed sympathy for the former president amid his myriad criminal charges, with observers guessing he was fishing for a pardon should Trump return to the White House.
Yet now that Trump is president-elect, Avenatti told Fox News Digital from his California prison that he’d be a “fool” to count on that.
“If the president was so inclined, he could show some empathy and reduce my sentence or commute some of the charges,” Avenatti said in a phone interview. “I’m not holding out for that. He’s got a lot of other things on his mind right now. Perhaps someday, he may show some empathy towards me, or he may not. But I think I would be a fool to count on that at this point. And, for that reason, I’m just trying to do what I need to do and stay close to my family and my faith at this point.”
A liberal media star in 2018, Avenatti rose to fame with his aggressive representation of Stormy Daniels as they sought to reverse a non-disclosure agreement she signed about an alleged affair in 2006 with Trump, which he has denied. Daniels was at the center of Trump’s conviction in New York earlier this year of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to her during the 2016 campaign.
Michael Avenatti says he’d be a “fool” to pin his hopes on a pardon from President-elect Donald Trump. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Called an “existential threat to the Trump presidency” by Stephen Colbert, Avenatti was a constant television presence in 2018, doing hundreds of interviews on CNN and MSNBC and popping up on Bill Maher, “The View,” the cover of Vogue and more.
But just as quickly as he rose, his life of crime was exposed, including stealing from clients, theft of Daniels’ book proceeds, and attempting to extort millions from Nike. Now an inmate at minimum-security Terminal Island federal prison in California, the 53-year-old says he’s trying to fix his life, and he now speaks of Trump in almost reverential tones.
“The president is a force of nature… He’s likely the most effective communicator in modern times, certainly one of the most effective presidential communicators the nation’s ever known,” he said. “He’s a fighter. I don’t know of any other person that could have withstood what he has withstood over the last eight years at this point and still come out on top.”
As a fellow multiple-indictee, Avenatti said he knew about the stress it puts on a person and his family.
“As a guy that’s been there, I don’t know how he did it, but it’s impressive as hell,” he said.
Michael Avenatti spoke with Fox News Digital from his prison in California about the 2024 election and whether he expects to be pardoned. (Screenshot/FNC)
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Such was his fame that Avenatti was floated as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 cycle – MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace memorably praised a speech he planned to give in Iowa in 2018 – but now he says the party is in such bad shape and out of step that he aligns more with Republicans. He called Trump’s decisive win over Vice President Kamala Harris predictable.
“I’m a member of the Democratic Party presently, but that may change as soon as I get out of prison,” he told Fox News Digital. “I may become a Republican because the Democratic Party today is not the Democratic Party that I’ve known over the last 30 or 40 years. I’m a Bill Clinton Democrat and if Bill Clinton ran for the presidency today, he couldn’t run as a Democrat. The Republican Party has become the party of the working class, and there are very few issues that I identify with the Democratic Party on now.”
Avenatti added that Democrats were rudderless and had a branding problem, and the former “Resistance” leader said such a movement was unlikely to effectively form in a second Trump term. It’s unlikely Democrats are concerned with his assessment, given the suspended lawyer’s badly damaged reputation.
“I think the Democrats better start thinking about how they’re going to potentially find some common ground with him to move forward,” he said. “But this whole idea of we’re going to reconstitute the Resistance, and we’re going to make Trump the devil day in and day out, and we’re going to engage in Trump Derangement Syndrome, those days have passed. It went nowhere before, and it’s going to go nowhere in the months to come.”
President-elect Donald Trump looks on during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC) (Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
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The disgraced attorney scored a legal victory last month when a federal appeals panel vacated his 14-year sentence for stealing millions from his clients in California. The panel found the sentence was based on calculations of greater financial losses than were actually suffered and referred back to a judge for resentencing, according to the Associated Press.
Avenatti said he believed he’d find out his revised sentence in the next four to five months and was hopeful the time would be “significantly less.”
That 14-year sentence was in addition to five years he was serving for separate convictions in New York on the Nike and Daniels cases. The appeals panel discussed in October whether the California sentence should run concurrently with the time Avenatti is serving on the other charges.
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Fox News Digital reached out to a Trump spokesman for comment.