Is Sean Hannity Avoiding Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer Michael Avenatti?

On Wednesday, Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, lashed out at Fox News host Sean Hannity on Twitter for discussing his client’s case with advocates for President Donald Trump, without giving him an opportunity to present his side of the story.

“Hey @seanhannity - what happened??? I thought you said you not going to have anyone on to discuss our case? I keep asking but you keep avoiding it. And then tonight you discuss it with guests. Why not me? C’mon Sean,” Avenatti tweeted.

The recent tweet came a couple of days after Avenatti tweeted urging Fox News to let him go on air, and even threw Trump’s newly appointed lawyer Rudy Giuliani an open challenge to debate him live.

So why does Hannity refuse to give Avenatti a platform to defend his client?

One of the reasons could be the fact that Avenatti’s client, Daniels, is suing the president, who is Hannity’s friend. However, Fox News has had guests on their shows in the past who did not necessarily agree with the POTUS, one of the most recent examples being former FBI director James Comey, who went on Fox host Bret Baier’s show April 26, to promote his book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership.”

Another reason could be not to aid Avenatti’s legal strategy to stay in the limelight by appearing in as many TV shows as possible.

Avenatti did not deny his legal strategy, even clarifying why he chose to do so.

“Listen up: Not all cases are the same nor is the winning strategy," he tweeted. "Here, the constant media/PR pressure has forced Trump, Cohen, et al. to make a series of huge errors and to make damaging admissions helpful to our case. This was not by accident. And we're not changing."

This is not the first time Daniels's lawyer expressed his wish to appear on Hannity’s show. Back in April, Avenatti said he wanted to appear on the Fox News host’s show during an interview with MSNBC. He followed it up by posting a photo on Twitter of him and Hannity posing together during a party. In the tweet, he said he was willing to appear on Hannity’s show for an hour.

Hannity tweeted back saying Daniels’ story was “old news” and he wasn’t planning on giving Avenatti any air time on his show.

However, since then Hannity has brought up Daniels’ story a number of times on his show, specially after his working relationship with Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen was revealed in public.

Following the shocking disclosure at the end of April, Hannity went on Twitter to claim: “Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.”

Shortly after that, Avenatti publicly released a Dropbox folder containing highlighted court transcripts and screen grabs of Hannity's tweets, which suggested if his and Cohen's work relationship extended to only business or consulting matters, then the Fox News host wouldn't have been listed within Cohen's client group.