Cheryl Senter/Associated Press
Just after making bail last Monday, the celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti did what he had always done in the swirl of a hot story. He called a reporter.
It did not seem to matter that he was now facing criminal charges in what federal prosecutors in Manhattan described as a scheme to extort millions of dollars from Nike, or that federal prosecutors in California had just filed unrelated charges that he had defrauded a former client and a bank.
Mr. Avenatti, the lawyer who represented the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against President Trump, walked into a cellphone store last Monday night and used the landline to call a reporter for The New York Times, beginning a campaign to deny all allegations against him and defend himself in the court of public opinion.