News & Notes

 1. Judge Graham declares a mistrial because of a late disclosure of discovery.  Law360 covers it:

On day 13 of the trial against Jason Todd Faley, Joseph Anthony Cavallo and Benjamin Clark Heath, Senior U.S. District Judge Donald L. Graham declared a mistrial, but refrained from dismissing the indictment with prejudice as the defense had requested.

The mistrial came after the government revealed a terabyte of data, including more than 400,000 emails, that was seized via a search warrant on GoDaddy.com in 2017 for the emails of cooperating defendant Mark Vollaro and others affiliated with Complete Healthcare Concierge, one of the companies through which the defendants allegedly ran a scheme to submit fraudulent prescriptions for compounded medications.

Prosecutors lost track of the documents after the seizure and did not discover the search warrant until just before trial, according to court documents. The data was shared with the court and the defense just after the jury was sworn in, court documents state.

2.  Michael Avanetti was sentenced to 14 consecutive years, making his sentence nearly 20 total years.  Too much? From CNN:

Dean Steward, an attorney for Avenatti, said in a statement to CNN that the sentence “was overly harsh and uncalled for,” adding that his client described it in court as being “off the charts.”

“When compared with similar high-profile cases, the unfairness is glaring,” Steward said.

Monday’s sentence represents the latest episode in an extraordinary years-long legal drama surrounding Avenatti, whose representation of Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who alleged she had an affair with former President Donald Trump years before he ran for office, made the pugnacious attorney a household name.

“Avenatti’s fraud was egregious, and the court plainly meant to send a strong message. But a 14-year sentence is extraordinarily long given all the circumstances,” said CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig. 

3.  Former Congressman David Rivera has been charged.  His case is assigned to Judge Gayles. From Politico:

Former Florida Rep. David Rivera, who had successfully outflanked a series of investigations during his lengthy political and consulting career, was arrested Monday by federal authorities in connection with an ongoing probe into his work with Venezuela’s authoritarian regime.

Rivera, who represented a Miami-area district from 2011 to 2013, was detained in Georgia on Wednesday in connection with a Miami grand jury indictment issued last month. His arrest was first reported by The Associated Press. According to the indictment unsealed on Monday night, Rivera and his former political consultant, Esther Nuhfer, are facing charges of conspiring against the U.S., failing to register as foreign agents and engaging in illegal financial transactions including money laundering.

“It was the purpose of the conspiracy for the defendants to unlawfully enrich themselves by engaging in political activities in the United States on behalf of the government of Venezuela, and by representing the interests of the government of Venezuela before officials of the of the United States government and in an effort to influence United States foreign policy,” states the 34-page indictment.