All right, Michael Avenatti. That’s basta from you.
What’s “basta,” you ask? Ye of little memory. It’s Italian for “enough!,” and it became Avenatti’s catchphrase throughout the early years of Donald Trump’s administration as the lawyer became famous for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels, who was trying to get out of a non-disclosure agreement she signed with Trump over allegations the two had a sexual encounter in 2006.
Avenatti’s catchphrase eventually switched to “not guilty, your honor,” as he faced a slew of charges beginning with an attempt to blackmail sporting giant Nike. It turns out this catchphrase didn’t quite catch on with prosecutors and/or juries the same way “basta” did with MSNBC and CNN, since Avenatti has since pleaded guilty or been convicted on numerous charges. (This includes defrauding Daniels herself — a conviction a New York appeals court upheld in a unanimous decision last month, according to Reuters.)
You’d hope, given the circumstances, that we wouldn’t be hearing from the man Tucker Carlson once famously dubbed the “creepy porn lawyer” for quite a while now, given that he is to the legal profession what the “Rev.” Al Sharpton is to the Christian clergy, credibility-wise.
Alas, no. As if seeking to recreate the magic of 2017 — when Avenatti was practically camped out in liberal cable newsrooms, so frequent were his appearances on air with those outlets — MSNBC had Ari Melber call the prison where Avenatti is being held to get his opinion on the so-called “hush money” case former President Donald Trump faces over the NDA with Daniels and other women.
This isn’t a joke, folks. This is real life in 2024, and, as Melber noted, Avenatti is in the process of serving a combined 19 years in prison on various charges, including defrauding clients.
And — quelle surprise! — Avenatti thinks Trump will be convicted, although he concedes the prosecution’s case has significant flaws and may be overturned on appeal.
MSNBC probably had Avenatti on because they thought that the man who made his name waging a one-lawyer war against Trump during the early years of his administration would be inclined to say the case was in good shape.
However, disgraced though he may be, Avenatti hasn’t entirely lost touch with reality and gave the Maddow network a taste of it by bluntly stating what everyone off of cable news knows: That this is “the wrong case at the wrong time,” considering it’s “in many ways stale at this juncture.”
Do you trust Michael Avenatti?
Not only is it stale, but it’s well past the statute of limitations for the crime Trump was accused of committing. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, however, used a novel application of the law — arguing that since the NDAs were falsifications of business records in service of another crime, federal campaign violations during the 2016 race, he could still be charged.
Never mind that he can’t be charged with the first crime, which would generally render the second one moot. “Stale” is hardly explaining the half of it.
However, Avenatti still thinks that Trump will end up being convicted.
“You know, I think the case has a lot of problems. Now that does not —I don’t mean to suggest that that means that Trump will not be convicted because I think he will be convicted,” Avenatti told Melber.
“And I think it rests on a legally tenuous theory, namely that the crime that was attempted to be covered up was a federal election crime. I think that could be a problem potentially on appeal for the state,” he continued.
“And I think it’s going be tested on appeal when Trump is convicted. And again, I think he will be convicted. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going hold up.”
However, he did go on to say that he thought the election interference case brought against Trump by special prosecutor Jack Smith should have been the first to go among the criminal charges against Trump, and that the “stale” nature of the Daniels allegations makes it a poor choice of a first legal swing at a former president and likely major-party nominee for that same position.
“I believe if you’re going bring a case against a sitting president or a former president, who tens of millions of people support, especially in today’s day and age with how divided we are, I think it needs to be a rock-solid, lock-tight, nearly perfect prosecuted case. Because otherwise, you run a huge risk as to what it’s going mean for the country,” he said.
Here’s the full interview, which was aired Tuesday:
There are, of course, several takeaways from this — the first being that, if you’re going to find someone to opine on Trump’s Stormy Daniels trial, you should probably look elsewhere than a guy who’s behind bars, in part, for defrauding Daniels while he was representing her.
Now, granted, nothing Avenatti says should be trusted. That’s how it always was, and MSNBC uncritically aired this guy’s opinions on Trump’s legal state in countless interviews before Avenatti’s own arrest.
This time, the network uncritically aired Avenatti’s opinions … and then brought in a few people to say that maybe we shouldn’t be taking a convicted felon’s opinions at face value. That exchange can be watched here, although it somehow manages to be less worthwhile than the Avenatti segment itself and with people who know less about Bragg’s case from an insider’s perspective, inconceivable though that may seem.
Its point appeared more intended to restore MSNBC viewers faith in the ultimate rightness of the Get Trump cause than it was to actually knock down Avenatti’s points. The fact that MSNBC apparently felt threatened by the legal points made by a guy talking by phone from the Terminal Island Federal Correctional Facility in California says as much about the network as it does about the case.
And why does Avenatti think that Trump will be convicted? In part because — please suppress your laughter — he says he doesn’t “believe criminal defendants generally get a fair shake” in our legal system. That may be the case with Trump, but I don’t think that Avenatti is talking about this from, er, an entirely dispassionate position.
Now, it’s worth noting that New York City juries aren’t exactly the most predisposed to like Trump, and Avenatti made a good point when brought up a hypothetical change of venue:
“To the people who claim that, in fact, he can get a fair trial in New York with a New York jury, I would ask them, if they were going to go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and fine out that the case had been moved to Mississippi or Alabama, would they still think that the trial was going to be fair?” he asked. “And I think if they were being honest, they would answer ‘no.’
“So, I don’t think he can get a fair trial in New York.”
So, Gotham juries may be gullible and biased when it comes to sticking it to Trump (see Carroll, E. Jean), but one hopes even they know when to say “basta.”
For that matter, so should Avenatti. And so should MSNBC. And so should MSNBC’s viewers.
Avenatti’s time has come and gone. MSNBC can’t bring it back — not even for a ludicrously biased Trump trial in ludicrously biased For once, the catchphrase is apt: Basta, MSNBC. Just basta.
