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LOS ANGELES—Attorney Michael Avenatti was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of domestic violence, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said.
The spokesman wouldn’t elaborate on the incident that led to the arrest, but said Mr. Avenatti hadn’t yet been booked into jail.
Mr. Avenatti rose to national prominence this year through his representation of Stephanie Clifford, the former adult film star who was paid to keep quiet about her allegations of a badual encounter with President Trump.
In a statement sent through his law office, Mr. Avenatti denied the allegations and said the police were only doing their jobs. “I have never been physically abusive in my life nor was I last night,” he said. “Any accusations to the contrary are fabricated and meant to do harm to my reputation.”
Mr. Avenatti has become a vocal opponent of Mr. Trump, appearing often on television news programs and sparring with the president’s supporters on Twitter.
More recently, he represented a woman who brought allegations of badual misconduct against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation process. He has also dabbled with a presidential run for 2020.
He is best known, however, for his representation of Ms. Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, in a lawsuit seeking to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed in exchange for $130,000 in hush money. A federal judge in Los Angeles overseeing that suit in mid-October dismissed a related defamation claim Ms. Daniels brought against the president and ordered her to pay Mr. Trump’s legal fees in the case.
Later in October, Mr. Avenatti faced back-to-back setbacks in court when a judge ordered him to pay a multimillion-dollar judgment to a former colleague, and a separate judge ordered his law firm to vacate its office space for failure to pay rent for several months.
Over the past year and a half, more than a dozen creditors have gone to court to collect millions of dollars in debts they allege are owed by Mr. Avenatti, his law practice or his corporate entities.
Mr. Avenatti told The Wall Street Journal in June that his personal and financial dealings and legal practices shouldn’t be of public interest, and that he was thriving financially.
Write to Sara Randazzo at [email protected] and Zusha Elinson at [email protected]
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