Disgraced former lawyer Michael Avenatti recently suffered a humiliating defeat from an appellate court as he tried to get his prison sentence overturned. Avenatti is going to be spending a long time behind bars for a variety of different crimes – And this is the guy who the media once hyped as the savior of the Democratic Party. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Disgraced former lawyer, Michael Avenatti, recently suffered a humiliating defeat from an appellate court as he tried to get his prison sentence overturned. Avenatti, well, he’s gonna be spending a long time behind bars for a variety of different reasons. And this is the guy who the media once hyped and Democrats embraced, oh, this is our future. This guy. Do you remember that? I mean, run him for president, don’t you remember? My God, we did a show on him and we got all of this fan mail about Avenatti, how he’s the bright new future of the Democratic Party. It’s hero worship. And both sides do it. My God, Trump hero worship. But here they were willing to jump and hug this guy, embrace him because he talked bad about Trump. That’s all it was. He talked bad about Trump, therefore he’s the future of the Democrat. Do you remember that?
Farron Cousins: Oh, a hundred percent.
Mike Papantonio: I remember Avenatti writing to you, attacking you because we were calling him a dirt bag back then. Do you remember that? I mean, before any of this happened, we had inside information that was already showing that he was ripping off clients. He was committing fraud with his clients. Because this is our business. We knew what a dirt bag he was. So we started doing the dirt bag stories and our people started writing comments to us. Like, how dare you, this is the future of the Democratic Party. Do you remember that? Or is that just my imagination?
Farron Cousins: I remember all of it. I frequently actually go back and look at that message that he sent me, because it is so just absolutely insane.
Mike Papantonio: Did he threaten to sue you or, sue me, sue you, sue all of us?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It was a lot of how dare you call yourself a lawyer? Which I don’t, because I’m not, but it was just so vile and crazy. And that was one of the real first impressions of this guy. That was before we knew about all of the fraud he was committing. And again, there was a time, there was like a year and a half span, you couldn’t turn on MSNBC or CNN without seeing his big dumb face.
Mike Papantonio: Oh my God. He’d be up there with Rachel Maddow, Rachel, who I used to do a program with for a long time, you know, acting like this is the bright new future. During a time when we had his picture up here calling him a dirt bag punk because we knew what he was really about.
Farron Cousins: Well, and what’s funny is, yeah, he was the guy, he was gonna be the next leader of the Democratic party. Then when he fell from grace, everybody said, okay, well it’s gonna be Cuomo next.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So maybe stop moving on so quick because it’s not working out so well.
Mike Papantonio: It’s hero worship, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Is is. Anybody who stands up to Trump?
Mike Papantonio: Do you understand it? The whole hero worship because as hard as I try, I can’t. I guess my base is to say maybe it happens because we expect so little, don’t we?
Farron Cousins: We do. We really do. Because all it took was this guy saying, hey, I’m taking Trump to court and everybody said, well, we love you.
Mike Papantonio: He was stealing millions from his clients. One client I remember in particular, paralyzed, completely paralyzed, stole his money. Stole Stormy Daniel’s money. Committed fraud against Nike. All this was happening and we saw the edge of it before anybody else did and said, this is a punk dirt bag. What in the hell are you Democrats doing, saying that’s gonna be our next Democratic guy, our president? They literally were talking like that.
Farron Cousins: Well, he gets outta jail in 2036. That is a presidential election year. So we’ll see if he runs that year.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, thanks for joining me. That’s all.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all these segments are gonna be available throughout next week. And make sure you follow us at Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t let ’em, or their political connections, whether Democrat or Republican, don’t allow for it. We’ll tell you these stories whether you get mad at us or not telling the stories, we’re gonna tell the stories and we’re not gonna change that. So understand it is who we are. We’re not tribal. We don’t have a party. We tell it right down the middle. We’ll see you next time.
