‘They want to cripple me’: Lawyer Michael Avenatti discusses his ‘gargantuan fall’ from hero to public disgrace

Michael Avenatti described his tumultuous recent years during a series of interviews with Politico's Ruby Cramer.

"Inside a two-bedroom apartment, 11 blocks from the ocean, there is a man in free fall, though he has nowhere to go. He wears a monitor on his right ankle, government-issued, blinking green beneath his tapered track pants," Cramer wrote. "The last time he drove a race car, his most beloved and expensive habit, was 1,411 days ago. The last time he had a Grey Goose martini (up, two olives) and a New York strip at Craig’s, his preferred hangout in West Hollywood, was 709 days ago. The last time he wore his five-figure Patek Philippe Nautilus watch, before it was seized by the government, was 708 days ago. The last time he talked to his former client, Stormy Daniels, was February 2019. The last time a reporter asked him about running for president was March 24, 2019, the Sunday before his arrest."

The State Bar of California says Avenatti is "not eligible to practice law" and list four consumer alerts on his page.

“I am not a Boy Scout, and I am not a serial killer. It’s easier for us when it comes to judging other human beings, to say, ‘He or she is 100 percent good, or he or she is 100 percent bad.’ Right? Because that makes it easy," he explained. “Of course I made mistakes — you don’t end up in this situation without making mistakes. Whether those mistakes should put me where I am now is a different story. I haven’t been naïve in a long, long time, but I was naïve about this.”

READ MORE: The spectacular fall of anti-Trump lawyer Michael Avenatti

Avenatti believes he was targeted by the Trump-era Justice Department for his political activism.

"One day in February, he was on his way back to [the Metropolitan Correctional Center] from court, accompanied by three guards, when a senior correctional officer intervened, he says. The senior officer led him upstairs, pausing in the vestibule outside 10 South. 'You know why you’re here, right?' he said. Avenatti says the officer told him he was in 10 South at the direction of the attorney general, Bill Barr, and to have his lawyers 'look into it.' Then he picked up the phone and buzzed Avenatti back to his cell.," Politico reported.

Avenatti noted that prosecutors in California prevented him from staying with his parents in St. Louis and prevented him from living with an ex-wife because she may be called as a witness.

"The whole goal here was to cut me off from any potential support — financial, emotional, or otherwise," Avenatti said. "They wanted to cripple me."

Read the full report.