Michael Avenatti will be sentenced Thursday for cheating client Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who catapulted him to fame, of hundreds of thousands of dollars in book proceeds.
The California lawyer, currently incarcerated, is expected to learn his fate in Manhattan federal court, where he was ordered to appear in person rather than remotely.
The book's publication came at a time when Avenatti's law practice was failing financially even as he appeared regularly on cable television news channels. His conviction for aggravated identity theft requires a mandatory two-year prison sentence. He's already serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for trying to extort Nike. And he faces a retrial in California on charges that he cheated clients and others of millions of dollars there.
The lawyers cited an apology letter Avenatti recently wrote to Daniels in which he said: "I am truly sorry."