Matthew Russell Lee live-tweeted the proceedings.
As I learned from Popehat, the federal guidelines for unsuccessful extortion schemes are particularly flawed.
Also, Judge Gardaphe, thoughtful and fair in my experience, seemed quite pissed that Avenatti’s caper partner Mark Geragos wasn’t indicted.In Avenatti’s Nike extortion case, Probation calculated the Guideline range as 135-168 months and recommended a downward variance to 96 months. Avenatti asked for 6 months. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
Probation’s recommendation below the guidelines is likely (we don’t have their letter so we don’t know) reflecting some disquiet about how “loss” is calculated. See, the biggest part of white collar sentences is driven by how big the “loss” was.
But in cases like this, where there was no actual loss because the imbecile tried to extort Boies Schiller and Nike and got stomped like a bug, the theory is that you use INTENDED loss — that is, TRYING to extort $20 million is treated the same as SUCCESSFULLY doing it.
Everyone else thinks it’s bullshit. It frequently produces irrational results — a nutty extortion demand for a million is treated far harsher than a nutty demand for ten thousand, even though the conduct is otherwise the same.
It has never been cogently explained why Mr. Geragos was never acted on as a co-conspirator. I intend to impose a sentence of 30 months.