From Michael Avenatti to Michael Jackson: How the players in every scandal this year are connected

AP Photo/Brian Melley

On Tuesday, prosecutors charged Michael Avenatti with trying to extort Nike of tens of millions of dollars.
The charges bring into view a head-spinning array of connections between various high-profile scandals in the past few years.
Here’s how all the scandals involving Avenatti, Donald Trump, Theranos, Jussie Smollett, and Colin Kaepernick are all connected.

On Monday, federal prosecutors charged Michael Avenatti with trying to extort Nike, alleging they caught him on tape threatening the company with lawsuits and bad press unless the company paid him and a client more than $20 million.

Michael Avenatti, as you may remember, is a lawyer who, until recently, represented the adult film actress Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit to end a hush money arrangement between her and President Donald Trump — an arrangement brokered by Michael Cohen. Avenatti also represented six parties in the cases against R. Kelly — two of them allegedly victims — and handed over a tape to prosecutors that he says shows Kelly having sex with an underage girl.

You wouldn’t be the first to notice that this all seems like the plot of "Crash" or "Magnolia." Everything is connected. The same handful names seem to come up in the news whenever there’s a new scandal. Here’s a handy chart that lays it all out:

Skye Gould/INSIDER

Avenatti isn’t the only celebrity lawyer involved in the Nike case. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mark Geragos has been named a co-conspirator in the case. Geragos is a lawyer who’s represented the celebrities Jussie Smollet, Michael Jackson, Kesha and Chris Brown — all of whom have had their own scandals and controversies — as well as convicted murderer Scott Peterson. He was also, until recently, a CNN legal analyst. The network told INSIDER he no longer works for the company.

Geragos also represents Colin Kaepernick, with whom Nike is running a massive advertising campaign. Geragos has represented the controversal football player in his lawsuit against the NFL.

On the other side of the Nike case is the elite law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, headed by attorney David Boies. Boies is representing Nike in its dealings with the Department of Justice.

And Boies himself has been involved in numerous scandals. He was once heralded as something as a liberal superstar, winning high-profile antitrust cases and representing former vice president Al Gore in Bush v. Gore.

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

But for years, he’s represented Harvey Weinstein in his attempts to shut down reporting about his alleged sexual misconduct. He reportedly directed Black Cube, a private spy agency, to run smear campaigns against Weinstein’s alleged victims and journalists investigating him, including the New York Times, which Boies also represented.

Boies also represented Theranos — the now-shuttered company run by Elizabeth Holmes that falsely promised to revolutionize blood tests — in its attempts to intimidate whistleblowers into staying silent about the company’s schemes. As reported by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyou in his book "Bad Blood," Boies was paid in Theranos stock and took a position on the company’s board.

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Also serving on Theranos’s board was James Mattis, who was then a decorated US military general who left his stint as the Commander of United States Central Command. Mattis reportedly helped Theranos navigate the process to obtain military contracts and helped burnish its fraudulent reputation as a company that was developing technology for the military.

When Trump took office, he hired Mattis as his Secretary of Defense (Mattis quit in December). And Trump himself was sued by Stormy Daniels, who was represented by Michael Avenatti, who— well, you get the point.

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