BREAKING: Sketchy lawyer does it again!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2018

Avenatti's latest: We have a confession to make. Bombastic barrister Michael Avenatti strikes us as perhaps a bit of a fairly obvious con man.

We could be wrong in that impression, of course. But just consider his latest.

Monday morning, the lascivious lawyer was creating excitement again. Appearing on CNN's New Day, he made an intriguing promise, based on an earlier tweet:

ALISYN CAMEROTA (4/9/18): OK, you tweeted out this weekend:

"Expect a major announcement in the coming days regarding our efforts to identify the thug who threatened Ms. Clifford, Stormy Daniels, in Las Vegas in 2011 to leave Trump alone while making reference to her little girl. You can run but you can't hide. #thugsearch seriousconsequences basta."

So, care to tell us what your major announcement is, in terms of searching for this person?

AVENATTI: So my client sat down with Lois Gibson. She's the foremost forensic artist in the world. She has the Guinness, she has a world record for the number of IDs a composite sketches been produced. We're going to be reducing, or we're going to be releasing that tomorrow, along with a significant reward asking that the public come forward. We are very close to identifying this individual.

CAMEROTA: You are?

AVENATTI: We are.

CAMEROTA: You have a composite sketch and you think you know who this person is?

AVENATTI: We are very close. We need some assistance from the public. We're going to offer a significant reward to get us over the goal line. And I'm confident that we're going to get there.

Good lord! Seven years after being threatened, Avenatti's heroic client had gotten around to creating an artist's sketch of her alleged assailant, who may or may not exist!

And not only that! They were very close to identifying her assailant without releasing the sketch! (Las Vegas books are giving 5-to-1 that the sketch looks like O.J. Simpson!)

In our view, Camerota could have done a better job at this point. She could have asked if people can really create a sketch of this type seven years after the fact. (Avenatti would have said yes.)

Also, on what basis had they almost identified the assailant? And if they already had their man, why were they bothering with the sketch and with the huge reward? A huge reward with money coming from where?

Whatever! By the way, has anyone noted how much this lawyer's prose style resembles that of Donald J. Trump? His sketch artist was the greatest ever! This was based on his earlier tweet!

At any rate, Camerota did pose some questions about this tale. As always, Avenatti wasn't going to fall for that old trick:

CAMEROTA: Have you shared it with the police?

AVENATTI: I'm not going to answer that.

CAMEROTA: Can you show us the composite picture right now?

AVENATTI: Not right now.

[...]

CAMEROTA: How much is the reward?

AVENATTI: I'm not going to tell you.

CAMEROTA: But are police working with you on this?

AVENATTI: Again, I'm not going to answer that right now.

As usual, he couldn't tell us right now! Trump tends to play this way too.

Question: Did anyone actually threaten Clifford back in 2011? Like you, we have no idea.

It's possible that somebody did. It's also blindingly obvious that she could be making this up.

Luckily, though, her blustery barrister had a composite sketch ready to go! It would surely be big huge news when he released the sketch on Tuesday. Also, that big reward!

By Tuesday, though, there was other big news, and so the bullish barrister pulled things back. We had to laugh when the transparent phony explained his decision to Nicole Wallace on last night's 11th Hour:

WALLACE (4/10/18): Let me ask you about the sketch that you committed to releasing. And this was a sketch of the potential suspect....Where are you in that investigation, and where is that sketch?

AVENATTI: I have the sketch. Stormy Daniels, Ms. Clifford, sat down with Lois Gibson, who is a world renowned forensic artist based in Houston. She has the world record for the most identifications from sketches. She's incredibly talented. She sat down with her for an extended period of time. An accurate sketch has been compiled.

WALLACE: So it's a creative delay? An artist delay?

AVENATTI: No, it's not a creative delay. It's ready to go. We've been asked this morning to delay the release of the sketch. We were prepared to release it.

It isn't that he chose to delay the release. Mysteriously, the bumptious barrister had been asked to delay it!

He'd been asked to delay the release! Excitedly, Wallace pressed forward:

WALLACE (continuing directly): For law enforcement purposes?

AVENATTI: Well, I'm not going to get into—I'm not at liberty to discuss who asked us to delay it, but we were asked to delay it this morning, and that's what we're going to do it right now.

WALLACE: Based on how the sketch turned out, based on what the artist conjured, have you seen names of who that person might be?

AVENATTI: We have made progress relating to that identification process, and we're hopeful. At this point, I'll tell you this. We may not need to release the sketch.

The antic attorney isn't at liberty to discuss who requested the delay! Also, they may not release it at all!

Perhaps we're completely mistaken. It may be that Clifford really was threatened. It may be that they really will, by some miracle of soothsaying, come up with something resembling actual evidence to that effect.

For now, though, Avenatti continues to strike us as a transparent music man. Clifford is someone who says she had sex with a married person whose wife had just given birth, then tried to score a lot of cash by selling her sexy-time story.

She tried for the cash in 20l1, then again in 2016. We think it's good that Cohen paid her and told her to please go away.