Avenatti calls Trump a ‘victim of the system’ in prison interview

Former lawyer Michael Avenatti has broken into the silent case against former President Trump, arguing there was political motivation to prevent the former president from retaking the Oval Office in November.

“I certainly see [Trump] as a victim of the system,” he said in a telephone interview with Fox News Digital while in prison. “And that’s something I never thought I’d say. So if Michael Avenatti is coming to his defense, and I was one of his staunchest opponents for a very significant period of time, that should tell people something.”

Trump’s secret trial began last week in Manhattan, where he faces 34 counts of falsifying business records linked to a payment his former fixer, Michael Cohen, made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about his alleged affair. with Trump.

Avenatti, who previously served as Daniels’ attorney, is currently in prison for stealing recipes from the actress’s books and for defrauding millions of dollars from other clients and obstructing the IRS.

Last month, an appeals court upheld Avenatti’s 2022 conviction, sentencing him to four years in prison and requiring him to pay $148,000 in restitution and forfeit the roughly $297,000 that prosecutors say he stole from Daniels.

Avenatti, once a vocal critic of Trump, said the four separate criminal cases against the former president are “an absolute overreach” as he seeks re-election, Fox News Digital reported.

“There is a group of individuals in the United States who have decided that they know best who should be the next president and have decided that they don’t want to leave it to ‘the little guy.’ ” he said. “So they are going to take matters into their own hands to prevent these people from being heard, and I am deeply disturbed and disgusted by this.”

Trump faces a total of 91 criminal charges across four separate jurisdictions.

Avenatti said the issue of Trump’s presidency should be “resolved at the ballot box” and argued that prosecutors involved in the four cases had personal motivations to gain prominence.

“If the defendant were anyone other than Donald Trump, this stale case would not be being brought now,” he said. “He was definitely a target… There’s no doubt these prosecutors are trying to make a name for themselves.”

He told Fox News Digital that he had been in contact with Trump’s legal defense team about the possibility of testifying in the hush money trial and said he would tell the truth if called to testify.