CALIFORNIA/LEGAL/MICHAEL COHEN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Calling for an end to the ‘media circus’ that has engulfed his numerous legal cases, Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal fixer, has asked a judge in California to keep his adversary, the lawyer Michael Avenatti, from speaking about him in the news media. In a motion filed on Thursday [6-14-18] night in Federal District Court in Los Angeles, Mr. Cohen requested that a restraining order be placed on Mr. Avenatti, a lawyer for the pornographic actress Stephanie Clifford, barring him from publicly discussing almost anything about a breach-of-contract lawsuit he had filed against Mr. Cohen. For nearly four months, Mr. Avenatti has been waging both a multifront legal effort and a guerrilla-style publicity campaign against Mr. Cohen, saying he had ‘zero credibility’ and repeatedly predicting his indictment. The request for the gag order, which legal experts said Mr. Cohen was unlikely to win, came in a suit in which Mr. Avenatti has accused Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump of breaking a $130,000 nondisclosure deal to keep Ms. Clifford, who is better known as Stormy Daniels, quiet about an affair she claims she had with Mr. Trump.”
-Alan Feuer and Benjamin Weiser, “Michael Cohen Seeks Gag Order on Lawyer for Stormy Daniels,” The New York Times online, June 15, 2018