Michael Cohen Lawyers Knock Stormy Daniels Lawyer For Going On TV A Lot

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The lawyers representing Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels are locked in a petty battle over the timing of correspondence between the lawyers about upcoming filing deadlines.

The lawyers representing a business set up by longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen complained in a Thursday court filing that Michael Avenatti, the attorney representing porn actress Stormy Daniels, had been slow to respond to an email even though he appeared on cable news shows.

Brent Blakely, one of the lawyers representing Essential Consultants, LLC, the business used to pay Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence, emailed Avenatti on April 3 to set up time to discuss an potential extension on a filing. However, Avenatti took more than a day to get back to him and proposed a weekend call, which would provide little time to submit the extension request, according to the lawyers for Essential Consultants.

“Mr. Avenatti did not respond to Mr. Blakely’s email for over thirty (30) hours, and when he did respond, Mr. Avenatti offered to schedule the call over the weekend (i.e. at least 2 days later),” the Thursday filing reads. “In the interim, on April 4, 2018, Mr. Avenatti appeared on at least three national television shows to discuss this case.”

The complaint came in a request to the judge for an extension to submit a filing. In that request, lawyers for Essential Consultants also accused Avenatti of being uncooperative as they sought more time to submit that filing.

Avenatti responded in a Friday filing and said that he had not acted improperly. He wrote that he responded to Blakely’s April 3 email the next morning, and that he suggested a call over the weekend because he knew Blakely had to be present at a trial during the week. He also defended his refusal to agree to an extension for the lawyers representing Essential Consultants because he feel’s it’s appropriate to stick to the schedule laid out by the judge.

“Notwithstanding the unfortunate personalized attacks lodged against Plaintiff’s counsel (which Plaintiff believes are completely irrelevant, have no place in Defendants’ filing, and which Plaintiff does not intend to respond to), the timeline laid out by Defendants’ counsel only confirms that Plaintiff’s counsel has conducted himself appropriately and that Defendants only have themselves to blame for the predicament they find themselves in relating to timing,” Avenatti wrote.

Avenatti’s client, Stormy Daniels, filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and Essential Consultants seeking to be released from a hush agreement she signed shortly before the election that barred her from discussing her alleged relationship with Trump. Daniels argues that because Trump himself never signed the agreement, it is invalid.

Read the filings:

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