The Internet went on a tear Monday evening after Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti told MSNBC host Ari Melber there are still more shoes to drop in the deepening scandal surrounding his client and President Trump.
“Ari, you know as a good lawyer yourself that good lawyers don’t play their entire hand on the first go-around,” said Avenatti. “We have a lot of information, a lot of evidence, a lot of documents that haven’t come to light yet. Numerous pieces of evidence, numerous facts, and we’re not going to show our hand.”
The remarks were par for the course from Avenatti, who has turned calculated leaks of his client’s March 25 interview on “60 Minutes” into a minor art form.
But the Internet took the bait (of course) and ran into a tizzy of wild speculation of what “evidence” Avenatti was teasing. At least one observer, who tweeted speculation that it was a photo of Donald Trump’s penis, briefly took over the Internet with more than 6,000 retweets.
Stormy’s Lawyer on MSNBC. I’ll paraphrase. “We have photos of Trump’s penis”.
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) March 19, 2018
And while it’s impossible to rule out for sure, media Twitter mostly smacked down the assertion, noting that Avenatti had said nothing of the sort. Still it wasn’t enough to stop people from descending into a morass of speculation.
The most significant hard disclosure from Avenatti so far was his revelation on “Morning Joe” last week that his client had been physically threatened by someone on Team Trump about her disclosures.
Lots of folks are retweeting this and screenshotting it (including big accounts) but her lawyer said no such thing, not even close to it. He said additional evidence including documents. pic.twitter.com/wZi7ZRyfB3
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) March 20, 2018
The number of blue checkmark, otherwise savvy people sharing a Claude Taylor tweet tonight is a good example of the depth of the information mess we're in.
— Tom Gara (@tomgara) March 19, 2018
I thought we had discussed not listening to Claude Taylor. https://t.co/lHrHq2zLCs
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 20, 2018
Let’s do some facts about @TrueFactsStated:
1) “Vet of 3 presidential campaigns:” FEC records show Claude never worked for a single federal campaign. Ever.
2) Never was on the Clinton White House staff per Clinton presidential library records
3) Claude Taylor is a liar and fraud pic.twitter.com/nss5xoCUdE— Evan Siegfried (@evansiegfried) March 20, 2018
Claude Taylor is a fraud and a grifter. Please don't give him the time of day.
— Chrissy Stroop (@C_Stroop) March 20, 2018
a good rule: never retweet Claude Taylor unless he's owned himself
— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) March 20, 2018
how do so many smart people i follow retweet claude taylor!!
— Tal Lavin (@swordsjew) March 19, 2018