Michael Avenatti Lived the High Life While Owing Millions to IRS
As Michael Avenatti floats a 2020 presidential run, court records reveal the lawyer and his companies owed millions in unpaid taxes and judgments.
On the Fourth of July, Michael Avenatti suited up for a CNN interview and floated his name as a contender against President Trump in 2020.
Asked why he’d be qualified, Avenatti told anchor Jim Sciutto, “Because I have three things that this president lacks, Jim—brains, heart and courage. And I think I have those in spades compared to this president.”
Scuitto then told Avenatti he’d face scrutiny over his finances, including his former law firm’s then-unpaid $2.4-million bill to the IRS. “You know, look, I’ll be happy to put my tax records and background up against the president’s background and his tax records. Of course, he won’t release any of that information,” Avenatti replied, before changing the subject to his political platform.
Now Avenatti, the tenacious California litigator made famous for representing Stormy Daniels in her legal tangles with Trump, is gearing up for a 2020 presidential run, stumping across the country and raising cash with his new political action committee, Fight PAC.
But the questions over his finances remain—and could become a sore spot on the campaign trail, as creditors pursue him and his former companies. Both the Eagan Avenatti law firm and a shuttered Seattle coffee chain, which Avenatti says he no longer owns, owe millions in unpaid taxes and judgments, according to court documents and filings with local recorder’s offices.
Tax liens filed in Orange County also show that Avenatti has personally owed at least $1.2 million in federal taxes on top of the corporate debts. One lien, filed in February 2018, was for $308,396, while another filed in August 2015 showed a balance of $903,987. The Daily Beast did not find records showing the liens were released, but Avenatti claims both debts were “fully paid.”
A String of Big Debts
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Civil court filings paint a picture of Avenatti as a hard-charging attorney who enjoyed the luxe life—jetting around the world to race cars with a Saudi prince and treating his wife and their friends to luxury villas in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Yet he and his companies owed hundreds of thousands in unpaid taxes and in compensation to one former colleague, who claims Avenatti stiffed him out of millions in law-firm profits.
A review of court documents reveals that Avenatti, his former law firm Eagan Avenatti, and his former company Global Baristas, the majority owner of the Seattle-based Tully’s coffee chain, have owed millions in unpaid federal and state taxes in Washington and California, as well as hundreds of thousands in past-due rent to landlords.
A Newport Beach landlord began eviction proceedings last month against Eagan Avenatti in Orange County Superior Court. The real-estate entity claims Eagan Avenatti failed to make rent for three storage spaces and a 8,371-square-foot suite, totaling more than $107,415 for the months of July and August. (A lawyer representing the Irvine Company, which manages the rentals, declined to comment.)
On Oct. 18, the landlord filed court papers indicating that Eagan Avenatti owes $213,253 in rent as of this month.
Avenatti told The Daily Beast he divested his interest in Eagan Avenatti within the last 12 months and that he now operates under Avenatti & Associates. “None of those obligations are my responsibility,” he said, when asked about the eviction case. Avenatti said he would forward this publication’s queries to the firm’s new owner, but declined to name them.
Yet in a Sept. 7 answer to the landlord’s complaint, signed by Avenatti himself, he claimed Eagan Avenatti made repairs to the suite and subtracted the cost from the rent. The firm offered to pay the rent due, Avenatti continued, but that the landlord “would not accept it.”
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