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when it takes more than five seconds for a password reset email to arrive i call 911
come on pacer you asshole i want to read avenatti's "but they were bad first" motion
still haven't gotten a password reset but since @adamsteinbaugh shared the memo of law with me and because literally one person requested it, let's read through avenatti's motion to dismiss together
@adamsteinbaugh great start. cribbing from the Roger Stone vs the Deep State manual. 
@adamsteinbaugh we're still in the introduction and the theory is taking shape: if the underlying facts about nike's conduct are true, the so-called "extortionate blackmail" is a routine settlement negotiation
@adamsteinbaugh pause for a second to note that the reason this all happened so quickly is because avenatti was telling nike that if they didn't agree to his terms immediately he would blow them up at a press conference, hence the arrest before said threatened press conference
@adamsteinbaugh this is not a bad layout of the basic defense avenatti will use at trial. however, i do not know how this is anything but an insanely fact-bound question that will require a trial rather than something for a motion to dismiss but i'm still on page 3.
@adamsteinbaugh on @weekinatrocity, when i talked about the criminal complaint with @HitherToFore and @mobute, the best we could figure was that Geragos was mostly silent and slack-jawed as the Basta train started rolling
@adamsteinbaugh seeking discovery on the vindictive prosecution claim is obviously a good idea and i can't disagree that there is ample evidence that trump thinks avenatti is a prick
@adamsteinbaugh damn, dude. leave bol bol and deandre ayton and especially a guy in the g league alone. i hate that avenatti's defense is contingent on supporting the agenda of the ncaa.
@adamsteinbaugh the crux of the defense is that the client's goal - and avenatti's - was genuinely righteous. to clean up the AAU world from Nike's malign influence (which is why there is so much about nike's shadiness), to justify the need for avenatti to run an internal investigation
@adamsteinbaugh i am just going to assume that avenatti's team has considered the privilege considerations of including this email in full
@adamsteinbaugh avenatti is trying to thread a needle here. he would go public if there wasn't a settlement, but it wasn't a cover-up, because any confidentiality would not extend to government testimony, even if they would not keep talking to the press.
@adamsteinbaugh "he admit it" - though avenatti disagrees with the characterization, and thinks that Boies was self-interestedly calling it a shakedown because Nike was dead to rights on paying high school players
@adamsteinbaugh the government counterpoint to avenatti's claim that the settlement proposal was legitimate will be that by avenatti's admission nike's cost of buying its way out of avenatti leading an internal investigation was roughly the proposed fee for the investigation
@adamsteinbaugh Avenatti is banging hard on the claim that only charging him and not Geragos is proof that the prosecution is vindictive.
@adamsteinbaugh i will agree that this is a pretty good thing to have on your side if you are going to accuse the president of using his staff to engage in a vindictive and retaliatory prosecution
@adamsteinbaugh the legal discussion isn't bad. admits to the high bar of getting the case dismissed and even for discovery on the selective prosecution question. as to clearing the bar, a) you didn't indict the alleged coconspirator, who the president does not notably hate; b) the notable hate;
c) the client's bona fide underlying claim and d) settlement discussions are routinely aggressive on much thinner claims and there are good public policy reasons why prosecutors don't treat them all as extortion.
however this is chutzpah
I predict that Avenatti will not get most of this discovery but (pending SDNY's response) I do not think he will get nothing either.
and i still don't have my PACER password reset email
~fin~
~fin~
it was kind of ok when avenatti jumped in to yell at popehat but when both of their fans jumped in to yell at each other my mentions became untenable and now i am muting it
