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Reuters
US lawyer Michael Avenatti has been charged with defrauding Stormy Daniels, the porn star he represented in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, federal prosecutors say.
They said Mr Avenatti, 48, took the money Ms Daniels was supposed to get from a book deal.
The high-profile lawyer already faces a number of fraud and embezzlement charges, including accusations of attempting to extort Nike.
He has denied all the allegations.
According to the indictment announced on Wednesday, Mr Avenatti is accused of using “misrepresentations and a fraudulent document purporting to bear his client’s name and signature to convince his client’s literary agent to divert money owed to Avenatti’s client to an account controlled by Avenatti”.
“Avenatti then spent the money principally for his own personal and business purposes,” it adds.
It also revealed that he had been hit with extortion charges relating to the Nike case, announced in March.
He has been accused of trying to blackmail the global sporting products maker out of more than $20m (£15m) by threatening to use his profile to inflict reputational harm on the firm.
Writing on Twitter, Mr Avenatti said: “No monies relating to Ms. Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled. She received millions of dollars worth of legal services and we spent huge sums in expenses. She directly paid only $100.00 for all that she received. I look forward to a jury hearing the evidence.”
The lawyer formerly represented Stormy Daniels, who was suing the president to get out of a non-disclosure agreement she signed before the 2016 election. The non-disclosure agreement related to an affair she said she had with Mr Trump in 2006.
The president has denied having an affair.