Michael Avenatti arrested over alleged $20 million extortion of Nike

The crusading lawyer who came to prominence representing Donald Trump's alleged lover Stormy Daniels was arrested on Monday in New York, charged with conspiring to extort $20 million from Nike.

Mr Avenatti, 48, from Century City in Los Angeles, was taken into custody in Manhattan at 12:30pm.

Ms Daniels tweeted that she was "saddened but not shocked" by his arrest, and said she would explain why at a later date.

Fifteen minutes earlier, he had tweeted that he was planning to make revelations about Nike on Tuesday.

He said he would be "holding a press conference to disclose a major high school/college basketball scandal perpetrated by Nike that we have uncovered. This criminal conduct reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball."

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York announced shortly afterwards that he had been arrested, and that they would be holding a press conference on Monday afternoon to detail charges.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles also filed charges against Mr Avenatti, with the California case accusing him of embezzling a client's money to cover his own debts, as well as using fake tax returns to obtain millions of dollars in loans from a bank.

The New York prosecutors said he was arrested on suspicion of "attempting to extract more than $20 million in payments from a publicly traded company by threatening to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met."

Court documents obtained by The Daily Beast showed that Mr Avenatti was recorded making threats to Nike on March 20.

He asked to be paid millions of dollars, and told Nike's lawyers: "I'll go take ten million dollars off your client's market cap. I'm not ------- around."

The court is the same one which prosecuted Michael Cohen over the $130,000 hush money payments made to Ms Daniels, Mr Avenatti's client. Mr Trump has always denied having sex with Ms Daniels.

Ms Daniels and Mr Avenatti parted ways  earlier this year, and on March 12 Ms Daniels confirmed she had hired a new lawyer, Clark Brewster.

Mr Avenatti insisted that he had terminated their relationship, and not the other way round.

Nevertheless, Mr Avenatti certainly made the most of his association with Ms Daniels, becoming an almost constant presence on cable television, and gleefully sparring with Mr Trump's supporters on the screen. Some even began to speculate whether Mr Avenatti would consider running for president himself.

In August 2018 Mr Avenatti fueled that speculation by launching a political action committee (PAC) - a fund which pools campaign contributions. He named his PAC The Fight and described it as being "focused on defeating Donald Trump's Republican cronies and enablers across the nation, up and down the ballot".

He spent the autumn burnishing his credentials - campaigning in Boston, and paying for his first political advert in November, ahead of the midterms.

Politico reported on October 29 that he had been assembling a political team for the past three months, recruiting veterans from the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns and touring at least 20 states.

He told the site he would make his decision on a presidential run by January 1.

However, his aspirations were dealt a significant blow when his ex-girlfriend accused him at the end of November of domestic violence. He was arrested, and released on bail. Charges were dropped in February, after LA prosecutors did not find enough evidence to support the claim. Mr Avenatti insisted the accusations were "baseless".

A report in The Daily Beast then laid bare a series of legal entanglements facing Mr Avenatti, including property tax complications, a failing coffee business, unpaid rent and eviction proceedings.

It also lifted the lid on his messy divorce, in which his second wife sought $215,643 a month in family support, describing a lavish lifestyle that included multimillion-dollar homes, high-end cars and a personal pilot.

A Los Angeles judge also issued an order saying Mr Avenatti must pay $4.85 million to a former law colleague at his Newport Beach firm, Jason Frank, who claimed he was owed millions of dollars in profit.

In February this year Mr Avenatti agreed to place the law firm in receivership. Mr Frank, however, claimed in court that Mr Avenatti had opened six bank accounts to funnel millions of dollars from the business and prevent them being seized by Mr Frank, as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

Mr Avenatti strongly denied any wrongdoing, saying: "Every dollar has been properly accounted for and reported as required and as previously set forth in numerous accountings."