Attorney Michael Avenatti arrives at federal court in New York in 2019. Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP

Attorneys for Michael Avenatti told a Manhattan federal jury Tuesday that their client was "on a mission" to settle claims on behalf of a youth basketball coach when he was arrested last year on charges that he tried to extort sports apparel giant Nike for millions of dollars.

In closing arguments that capped a nearly two-week trial, defense attorneys Scott and Howard Srebnick painted the embattled celebrity lawyer as a zealous advocate for his client, who was prepared to bring his considerable media profile to bear in order to expose corruption at Nike.

The descriptions ran contrary to assertions by Manhattan federal prosecutors that Avenatti had used claims from California basketball coach Gary Franklin to secure a payday for himself in order to wipe out mounting personal debts.

Avenatti, who rose to prominence representing adult film star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, is charged with two counts of extortion and honest-services fraud for threatening to go public with allegations that Nike had paid bribes to the families of top high school basketball recruits, unless the Oregon-based firm agreed to pay him between $15 million and $25 million to head an internal investigation of the company.

Howard Srebnick on Tuesday acknowledged that his client could be "harsh," "abrasive" and sometimes "chest-pounding" in his professional dealings. But, he said, that was exactly the type of powerful persona that led Franklin to hire Avenatti in the first place.

"In the words of Nike itself, he went in there to 'just do it' for his client," Srebnick said, quoting the company's iconic marketing slogan.

Prosecutors on Tuesday morning played a recording of Avenatti's March 2019 meeting with Nike's attorneys, in which he promised to "take $10 billion off of your client's market cap" if the company did not accede to his demands.

"This is what extortion looks like," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors told the jury of six men and six women that Avenatti was facing "crushing" debts of about $11 million at the time of the alleged shakedown, and presented testimony from a former employee, who said Avenatti had told her about a plan that would allow him to clear his debt and start a new law firm.

Critically, prosecutors alleged that Avenatti hid the proposed payments from his client and used the information he supplied to his own benefit.

"Why didn't he tell Franklin?" Podolsky asked. "Because he knew what he was doing was wrong."

"That's what this case is about: a betrayal of trust and a shakedown," Podolsky said.

Srebnick countered that no money ever exchanged hands, and said that Franklin would have signed off on the arrangement, had Nike ever made a formal offer.

Nike, for its part, has not denied making illicit payments to high school recruits, but its lawyers suggested the problem was limited to only a couple of executives. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office had previously prosecuted, successfully, three executives from rival sportswear firm Adidas, and later spun off that investigation into a grand jury probe of possible crimes by Nike.

An investigation by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission remains ongoing.

Podolosky on Tuesday urged the jury to ignore any allegations of wrongdoing by Nike as mere "distractions."

"None of it matters," he said. "Whether the allegations were true of not does not change that Avenatti committed extortion."

Scott Srebnick, however, said that Nike's involvement went to the heart of the case.

"It's not a distraction," he said. "It's an extraction, an extraction of the truth."

The jury was expected to begin deliberating Wednesday.

Regardless of the outcome in New York, Avenatti's legal troubles are far from over. Prosecutors in New York have also accused him of cheating Daniels, his former client, out of part of a book deal, and he faces a sweeping indictment in California, which accuses him of stealing millions of dollars from other clients.

 

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