It was interesting to glean the identity of the woman Michael Avenatti allegedly attacked. It was Mareli Miniutti, a 24 year old apparent prostitute bit part actress and native of Estonia (legally married to a New Yorker named Michael Miniutti). She has been dating Avenatti since October 2017 and cohabiting in Century City California with him since January 2018. Their disagreement seems to have stemmed from Avenatti’s repeated inability to provide the financial security he had promised [Mareli] Miniutti as an apparent condition for their relationship. Documents filed by Miniutti substantiating the basis for the restraining order state that Avenatti “has made promises to “take care of” her financially and sometimes fails to follow through“, in addition to being “financially controlling” . Documents also seem to state that when Avenatti was unable to provide Miniutti with sugar daddy levels of security, he became “vehemently” opposed to her making money on her own.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that given Michael Avenatti’s tendency to stiff his landlords, business partners, and the IRS for small fortunes, he seems to have done the same to his lovely, young, unabashedly gold-digging, social climbing, Hollywood girlfriend?
The result of the financial argument appears to be that Avenatti was verbally aggressive (calling Miniutti an “ungrateful f****** b****“), hit her forcefully with pillows, and allegedly dragged her from bed which resulted in superficial scratches and bruising on Miniutti’s leg and side. The court documents around the restraining order allege this was not the first major fight between the two.
Despite the split; I wonder how much she’s been influencing Michael Avenatti in his recent media efforts, if at all? Could she possibly be an ‘agent of influence’ herself? It looks kinda like the cases of Richard Spencer and George Papadapoulos to me, in which similar questions have been asked.
My paranoid pattern recognition and theorizing immediately went into overdrive when I noted that an increasing number of these ‘culture war’ dudes are romantically involved with Eastern Europeans. To be clear in the case of ‘Mareli Miniutti’ (guessing her birth name was ‘Mirela’ something), Estonia and Russia are not “buddies” especially in a modern information warfare context. However, there is major penetration into Estonia by Russian influence (even see ‘fentanyl warfare‘ which we see potentially elsewhere today), and according to Estonian reports, Miniutti seems to come from a town called Võru which is pretty close to the Russian border with Estonia. But that even being said, as of yesterday there was barely any info about her even on the Estonian top level domain. Who is this person?
It may not mean anything. But it might also mean a lot if this person was influencing Avenatti somehow in his quest to take down Donald Trump. And might mean even more if it somehow corresponds to Avenatti’s representation of Stormy Daniels (a.k.a. Stephanie Clifford) and the availability of Larry Flynt’s 10 million dollar offer. Flynt’s activities in themselves may have Russian / Trotskyist propaganda origins.
Have we seen this pattern elsewhere of attractive Eastern Europeans influencing inept ‘tough guy’ men who are major ‘figureheads’ in culture war? (The lesson seems to be that if you’re a man who thinks you’re a game player in influence, make sure nobody is driving you by the joystick. )
Update 11/23: A similar theme was pointed out to me in the case of formal Navy Intelligence Officer (clearance revoked) Jack Posobiec.
Here is where the ‘sexy time’ reference comes from: