CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said he felt like he had been tricked by disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti following the latter’s recent conviction.
A New York federal court determined that Avenatti, 48, who previously represented pornographic film star Stormy Daniels, was guilty of three charges related to allegations of attempting to extort millions from Nike.
Toobin was on the network Friday night to discuss Avenatti’s meteoric rise and fall.
“I remember once at the peak of all of this, we went to lunch in midtown, when our offices were in midtown, and we walked back together to CNN, and it was like walking with a major, major celebrity,” Toobin explained. “People came up to him. It’s like, you know, ‘Go for it! Go get Trump!’ … And at the peak of this, he even announced he was considering running for president, and he went to Iowa, he went to New Hampshire. And to call it hubris … doesn’t do it justice. I mean, the craziness of this.”
After explaining that the lawyer could serve “decades in prison,” Toobin admitted that he feels “kind of snookered, because I took him seriously.”
In addition to this conviction, Avenatti faces separate charges of tax, wire, and bank fraud in California and fraud and aggravated identity theft charges in New York for allegedly taking money that was supposed to be paid to Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with Trump prior to his presidency.
Prior to getting charged, Avenatti was a regular guest on CNN and MSNBC. During a 10-week period in the spring of 2018, he appeared on the two networks more than 100 times.
