Lawyer Michael Avenatti tweets documents allegedly showing Nike paid top college athletes
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Attorney Michael Avenatti, of Stormy Daniels vs. Donald Trump fame, decided to defend himself two weeks after being accused by federal prosecutors of trying to extort 20 million US dollars from Nike.
According to Reuters reports, Avenatti approached Nike attorneys in March saying one of his clients had evidence that the sportswear company had bribed top high school basketball players to play for Nike-sponsored college teams. He asked for 22.5 million US dollars for himself and 1.5 million US dollars for his client in exchange for not showing the documents to the press.
After being released on a 300,000 dollar-bail on the condition that he surrender his US and Italian passports, the attorney has published said evidence on Twitter this weekend.
1/2 - Here is a link to only SOME of the evidence showing Nike bribed players to attend "Nike" colleges. This evidence is now in the hands of law enforcement. Nike bribed over 100 players as part of their scheme and purposely hid the payments from the NCAA & fed investigators...
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) April 6, 2019
The sportswear company responded with the following statement, sent to US-based publication Footwear News: “Nike will not respond to the allegations of an individual facing federal charges of fraud and extortion and aid in his disgraceful attempts to distract from the athletes on the court at the height of the tournament. Nike will continue its cooperation with the government’s investigation into grassroots basketball and the related extortion case”.