NEW YORK — Jurors deliberating whether disgraced celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti stole $300,000 from his ex-client Stormy Daniels ended their first full day of deliberations Thursday without reaching a verdict.
The panelists, who began deliberating late Wednesday, signaled they were deadlocked early in the day in a note to the court after just four hours of talks.
“We are unable to come to a consensus on count one,” read the first jury note, sent out at around 11 a.m. “What are our next steps?”
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Jesse Furman told them to continue deliberating.
Avenatti faces one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. The jury cannot consider the second charge without finding him guilty on the first.
Prosecutors say Avenatti swiped the advance payments for Daniels’ tell-all memoir “Full Disclosure” in 2018 as he rose to fame representing her in litigation against former President Donald Trump over a nondisclosure agreement she said wrongly barred her from discussing their tryst.
Jurors later asked to review the entire transcript of testimony from Daniels, who said Avenatti “stole from me and lied to me” during her day and a half on the stand as the government’s star witness. They also requested the legal definition of “good faith.”
Avenatti dumped his public defenders on the trial’s second day to defend himself against the criminal charges. The California lawyer has argued he had a right to the money because Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, wasn’t paying for his firm’s ongoing legal representation.
The government’s case hinges on a letter Avenatti allegedly sent to Daniels’ publisher with her forged signature, authorizing it to divert payments to a trust account he controlled.
During his closing argument on Wednesday, the first and last words out of Avenatti’s mouth sustained objections when he disobeyed Judge Furman’s warning not to use the summation as an opportunity to testify without being subject to cross-examination.
“I will leave you with this: I’m Italian. I like Italian food,” he said in concluding his closings. “The case that the government is attempting to feed you has a giant cockroach in the middle of the plate. Would you eat that dish, or would you send it back? I submit that you would send it back.”
Avenatti defended himself in a separate embezzlement case in California, in which prosecutors charged him with defrauding five clients out of $10 million in settlement proceeds. It ended in a mistrial.
A Manhattan jury convicted Avenatti in 2020 on charges he tried to extort Nike for $25 million. A judge sentenced him to a 2 1/2-year prison term for the threats, which he’s yet to serve.
During the lunch break Thursday, Avenatti encountered former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a courthouse cafeteria. Palin’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times is being tried in the same building.
“Ms. Palin, how are you?” Avenatti asked Palin. Later, he wished her “good luck.”
“You, too. Best of everything,” responded Palin.
Asked how he was feeling after the jury’s morning note, Avenatti told the Daily News, “Better.”
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