This just came across the wire in the past hour.

Michael Avenatti, noted Trump foe, was, of course, arrested last month involving an attempt to extort Nike for tens of millions of dollars.

Today, he was officially indicted on 36 different counts. The LA Times has the report.

In a sweeping expansion of the criminal charges against Michael Avenatti, a federal grand jury has indicted the Los Angeles lawyer on 36 counts of fraud, perjury, failure to pay taxes, embezzlement and other financial crimes. Avenatti stole millions of dollars from five clients and used a tangled web of shell companies and bank accounts to cover up the theft, the Santa Ana grand jury alleged in an indictment that prosecutors will make public Thursday.

There are more details of some of his crimes at the link, such as this.

One of the clients, Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, was a mentally ill paraplegic on disability who won a $4-million settlement of a suit against Los Angeles County. The money was wired to Avenatti in January 2015, but he hid it from Johnson for years, according to the indictment.

While Avenatti has put up a tough front on Twitter since his original arrest, this doesn’t appear to be something he’s going to be able to brush aside. 36 counts and the evidence appears ample. This guy is likely going to prison for a long time.

Avenatti was, of course, made famous by outlets such as CNN and MSNBC, where he appeared over 100 times in a 10-week span as a way for them to attack President Trump. Those news media outlets that gave Avenatti such a huge platform should probably do a little introspection on just how low their journalist standards are.

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