With the Southern District of New York's indictment of Michael Avenatti over his alleged attempts to defraud Stormy Daniels, one #Resistance hero has been pitted against another. And although the media will be quick to distance themselves from the disgraced attorney, the fact is that they created this monster and they own him.

Michael Avenatti was one of many Newport Beach con men dressing up in designer suits to play-act the part of the Southern California elite. His office flanked the luxury open-air Fashion Island shopping center. His homes lined the California coast: one perched on Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach, another on Lido Island, and an extra high-rise in Century City up in Los Angeles. He lived like a millionaire, dodging taxes and structuring his professional dealings closer to a Ponzi scheme than a legitimate legal operation.

Plenty of Newport Beach con men bit the dust in 2008 as the housing collapse revealed finances that couldn't possibly fund their lavish lifestyles. They will continue to crumble. But instead of fading into irrelevance, Avenatti shielded himself with the president's ex-paramour — which is really just a kind way of describing a porn star he supposedly had an affair with and discarded more than a decade ago. And the media took the bait.

Between 121 CNN appearances and 108 MSNBC appearances, the media gave Avenatti $175 million worth of airtime, free of charge. CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter ought to check why his organization continued to enable such a thinly veiled hack, but then again, Stelter was in on the schtick.

"And looking ahead to 2020, one reason I’m taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news," Stelter told Avenatti just last year. There's only just one problem (aside from the obvious irony that Stelter was the one giving Avenatti his platform on cable news). They all knew he was an enormous jerk.

Among one of the least gross details in a Vanity Fair piece detailing the fall of Avenatti — he likens himself to Icarus — is his horrible treatment of cable news staff behind the scenes:



Perhaps Avenatti’s most Trumpian quality was the tension between his desire to be talked about incessantly and his crepey thin-skinned-ness if and when that talk turned to criticism, whether in the media or from strangers on Twitter ... Behind the scenes, his behavior was even more volatile. 'He had a terrible temper,' one prime-time anchor told me. 'He never lost it with me, or really with any of the talent, as far as I know, because it was mostly for the bookers or the people who were behind the scenes. But he would tell people, "I’m going to f—ing bury you. Why the f— would you do that?" if he didn’t like something.' A number of reporters recalled that he would physically invade their space. 'His nose gets millimeters from your face and it’s clear he knows no boundaries,' one broadcast reporter and producer told me.



Bookers and cable news celebrities were still platforming this fifth-rate sham of an attorney even after they knew he was berating their staffers. They elevated him as a voice of moral authority, a foil to the president they lambaste daily for his treatment of the press.

So, it could have come as no shock that multiple police reports detailed Avenatti verbally and violently abusing his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend. Yet, the media acted surprised and then ever so slowly distanced themselves from him.

The media took a con man fated for criminal status and irrelevance and turned him into a national celebrity at the vanguard of the #Resistance, all while knowing full well not just his ignorance on display for the public, but his viciousness directed towards their own.

Remember that the next time a talking head laments that there's some kind of "war on the press" going on.