An Orange County lawyer has asked a bankruptcy judge to seize much of the $577,000 donated to porn star Stormy Daniels to pay legal bills in her suit against President Trump, the Los Angeles Times reported. The lawyer, Jason Frank, is trying to collect on a $10-million judgment he won last month against Eagan Avenatti, the Newport Beach firm of Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti. The firm’s debt to Frank was among the biggest it promised to pay when it emerged early this year from chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Frank, who worked at Eagan Avenatti from 2009 to 2016, says the firm cheated him out of millions of dollars in pay. He won the judgment after the firm broke its promise, personally guaranteed by Avenatti, to pay Frank $4.85 million. In papers filed on Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, Frank asked Judge Catherine Bauer to order Eagan Avenatti to give him all legal fees, up to $10 million, that the firm might collect from clients in 54 cases. One of them is the lawsuit filed by Daniels to void the nondisclosure agreement that bars her from talking publicly about what she says was a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe resort. She received $130,000 to keep quiet.
