The spectacular rise and fall of loudmouth lawyer and Trump nemesis Michael Avenatti

For a time, not terribly long ago, it seemed impossible to escape the bald head and hyperactive countenance of Michael Avenatti. The heretofore-unknown loudmouth lawyer burst into the public consciousness at the side of a busty porn star, spearheading the Stormy Daniels legal campaign at a pace that gave Trump’s MAGA machine a run for its money.

Avenatti, temporarily, seemed especially good at playing the 45th president at his own game – going low, then lower, then louder and more grandstanding. He appeared 254 times on television over a year starting in March 2018, according to Newsbusters figures cited by a Washington Post column the following May – in which major US media players took petty hindsight swipes at each other for so frequently featuring a man then facing criminal charges on multiple fronts.

Those charges ultimately landed Avenatti in prison – which is where he is now, locked away at a federal facility in California, during what, Avenatti missed the chance to be on scene, inserting his opinionated two-cents, as he’d historically been wont to do.