Michael Avenatti
Lucy Nicholson | Reuters
A federal judge ordered prosecutors to explain by Tuesday afternoon why controversial lawyer Michael Avenatti is under tough jail restrictions typically imposed on accused terrorists and drug lords.
Avenatti is awaiting trial on an extortion charge in a jail cell that reportedly once housed Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Judge Paul Gardephe’s order came a day after Avenatti’s lawyers complained about the conditions the critic of President Donald Trump faces in what they called the “notorious 10-South” section of Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
Avenatti was arrested last week in Los Angeles after federal prosecutors there told a judge he had committed financial crimes while free on bail since last summer.
The attorney is charged in three separate federal cases that allege he ripped off clients, including porn star Stormy Daniels, for millions of dollars and tried to extort more than $20 million from athletic apparel giant Nike. Avenatti has denied any wrongdoing.
The Nike case could begin next week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Avenatti’s lawyers told the judge that the conditions he is being kept in at the jail are making it difficult for him to help lawyers prepare for that trial.
In a letter Monday to Gardephe, Avenatti’s lawyers said that since arriving in New York last Friday, he has been kept in 10-South, “the most secure floor in the entire” federal jail facility in Manhattan.
The Special Housing Unit is used to jail high-profile defendants and inmates who may either pose a risk to other prisoners or who could be in danger if housed in the jail’s general population.
Jeffrey Epstein, a former friend of Trump and President Bill Clinton, killed himself in the jail’s Special Housing Unit last August while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.
Two guards who allegedly failed to monitor Epstein and other inmates in the unit as required by jail rules have been criminally charged with allegedly trying to cover up that failure by falsifying jail records.
Avenatti’s lawyers obliquely referred to Epstein’s death in their letter.
The lawyers said Avenatti is apparently under “special administrative measures … which almost completely restrict his communications with the outside world.”
The cell where he is being kept, with an officer posted outside his cell round-the-clock and “two cameras focused on him,” reportedly was previously used to keep Guzman, the Mexican drug kingpin convicted in 2019 at a federal trial in Brooklyn.
Avenatti “has been locked down for 24 hours a day, in solitary confinement, except for attorney visits and two medical exams,” the lawyers wrote.
While he had “two social calls” since arriving at the MCC, Avenatti has been told that his special classification in the jail entitles him to just one pre-scheduled social call each month.
The attorneys said that the temperature in Avenatti’s cell “feels like it is in the mid-40s,” and he has been “forced to sleep with three blankets.”
“Not surprisingly, he has been having great difficulty functioning,” his lawyers wrote. “He has not been permitted to shave. We do not know the reason why he has been confined in the SHU, under SAMS.”
The letter goes on to describe the difficulty one of Avenatti’s lawyers had during a visit on Saturday in getting him to review documents that are part of his defense.
Avenatti’s attorneys said they want him transferred to the jail’s general population, “where he has the same ability to confer with other pretrial detainees.”
“While we understand that there may be hypersensitivity about Mr. Avenatti given the profile of this case, and the recent issues at this institution, this situation is truly hampering our ability to prepare for trial,” the lawyers wrote, in an apparent reference to the scandal over Epstein’s death while in protective custody.
In a handwritten note on the letter, Gardephe told prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to submit a letter “explaining why the current conditions of confinement are in place.”
Avenatti gained notoriety in 2018 for his representation of the adult film actress Daniels in several cases involving her claims that she had sex with Trump more than a decade ago. Trump’s then-personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in a hush money deal in October 2016 to keep her quiet about her claim before the presidential election that year.
Trump denies having sex with Daniels. However, he reimbursed Cohen for the payoff.