“This is just crazy that somebody can just tweet something out like this, or post it, and people just take it as truth,” attorney Michael Avenatti said. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images Legal Avenatti: I wasn’t scammed

Michael Avenatti on Tuesday lashed out at reports that a client who was preparing to level allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was a fake and part of a ruse by an outside group targeting Avenatti.

“I made the determination she was 100 percent credible well before Sunday night,” Avenatti, the attorney who also represents the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, told POLITICO, referring to the first time he disclosed the allegations involving Kavanaugh. “We’ve received over 3,000 inquiries in the last six months from people with all kinds of crazy stories and fabrications. I’ve heard it all. I’ve seen it all. Like we don’t vet clients. Give me a break.”


Kavanaugh is in a pitched battle to salvage his nomination, after two women have come forward to allege sexual misconduct decades ago. One of his accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday about her allegation that a drunken Kavanaugh assaulted her at a house party when they were both in high school.

An online post on Tuesday claimed that Avenatti had been scammed by the online forum 4Chan, a place where online users delight in trolling public figures, setting off a firestorm on social media and purportedly jamming up Avenatti’s Twitter account. The attorney said he temporarily shut down the account because of online threats.

“This is just crazy that somebody can just tweet something out like this, or post it, and people just take it as truth,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

Avenatti, a possible presidential contender in 2020, said his client is “100 percent” real and still planned to come forward. When pressed on why the public should believe the accusations involving Kavanaugh when he hadn’t yet fronted a witness and had himself made claims over Twitter, Avenatti said he had remained consistent.

“I’ve been really clear. The timetable has not changed,” he said. “We haven’t moved the timetable back. Nothing’s changed. We don’t just do this at the drop of the hat. Had we waited until everything was in place to surface these allegations, then everyone would be complaining that we just dropped this on the committee at the last moment. There’s no winning in this situation. We wanted to surface the allegations for the committee, reasonably, once they were vetted, which is what we did.”

But he said members of the Judiciary Committee had not followed up on his offer to have them interview his client. Avenatti said the client had agreed to an FBI investigation and a polygraph test.

When asked whether she would take her story public regardless of whether the committee called her to testify, Avenatti responded: “Correct.”

“We have not arrived at a firm plan relating to the initial disclosure of these allegations,” he said. “We are still working through it. This is a very dynamic situation with a lot of emotions at stake.”