Michael Avenatti upended the entire narrative around the Stormy Daniels case against President Donald Trump Tuesday evening when he provided documents suggesting that his client’s complaint is actually tied to charges of potential Russian collusion by the Trump campaign.
After he released the document, which claims that Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen received $500,000 from a company tied to a Russian oligarch after the election, Avenatti appeared on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” with host Lawrence O’Donnell to offer a challenge to the president and his attorney. The money, Avenatti said, was sent to the same shell company that Cohen set up to pay his client.
“Michael Cohen, if you’re watching this, authorize your attorneys to release the bank statements, the source documentation from this account to the American people, to the media, so that people can get to the bottom of this. And to the extent that we haven’t been accurate about something, then they can prove it up,” Avenatti said. “But Lawrence, that’s not going to happen.”
He continued: “This thing is ugly — and it’s gonna get worse for the president and for Michael Cohen. And it doesn’t matter how many times they send out Rudy Giuliani to call us names, call me an ‘ambulance chaser,’ do everything in his power to distract away from the facts.”
.@MichaelAvenatti tells @Lawrence: This thing’s ugly and it’s gonna get worse for the president and for Michael Cohen. #LastWord pic.twitter.com/Xh88IdgDv2
— The Last Word (@TheLastWord) May 9, 2018
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