Keith Davidson

A month after the raid, Avenatti posted to Twitter an email shortly after the raid that Cohen, whose signature still identified himself as Trump's personal attorney, had sent to Davidson saying he had lost all his contact info due to the seizure of his phone. Cohen asked Davidson to send all his contact information so Cohen could put it on his new phone. He ended the email with "Let me know how you want to communicate". Avenatti wondered why the two had communicated, since they were not representing any parties with opposing or shared interests at the time. In a March 11, 2019 interview on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time, Davidson relayed that he had cooperated with federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York who were investigating a potential Campaign Finance Violation by Donald Trump. Davidson relayed that he sat for roughly 20 hours of interviews with the DOJ. In response to this disclosure, Asha Rangappa stated that Davidson was an important independent corroborating witness for the prosecution in that he verifies that Stormy Daniels was paid at least, in part, for political purposes. Ken Cuccinelli added: “I actually think the most striking thing listening to Mr. Davidson is here's a guy who frankly caught negative attacks from one of his clients afterwards, and yet, he sat there and he denied you any hint of his impressions. He protected his attorney-client privilege even with a client who's given him a lot of hassle. You compare that to Michael Cohen with President Trump and the quality of respecting the obligations of the attorney is much higher with Mr. Davidson than it was from Michael Cohen.”

Davidson is a criminal defense, personal injury, commercial litigation and crisis management lawyer. He has settled over $200 million in cases including sexual assaults, sexually transmitted disease (STD) negligence cases, negligence, murder and medical malpractice matter. He opened up a solo practice after receiving his law license. Recalling his own modest background, and a letter from an aunt who had become a nun, his initial intent was to use his professional position to stand up for the poor and marginalized. He thus began representing criminal defendants. One of his earliest clients in that capacity, he recalled in 2018, was a young woman charged with murder, whom he was able to get acquitted. Her family was in such tight financial straits that the woman's mother sometimes paid Davidson in rolls of quarters.

Shortly before the election, at the beginning of November, The Wall Street Journal reported on the deal between AMI and McDougal and the alleged affair. AMI suddenly contacted McDougal again, saying that their goal had always been to make sure the story was never published. She fired Davidson and hired another attorney to file suit against AMI to let her out of the contract; in April 2018 she was successful.

In early 2018 Daniels broke her silence and recounted the affair to Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. By then she too had fired Davidson; her new lawyer, Michael Avenatti, charged that Davidson had colluded with Cohen both in his client's case and McDougal's to protect Trump. In June she sued Davidson for malpractice; two days later Davidson countersued her and Avenatti alleging defamation. He had earlier said that her claims were inaccurate and that he looked forward to correcting them "in an appropriate forum".

In May 2018 The Wall Street Journal reported that Shera Bechard, another former Playmate, had retained Davidson to negotiate a $1.6 million payment to her from an unnamed Republican Party official, supposedly after an affair that led to her having an abortion, according to a nondisclosure agreement that was among documents seized in the raid on Cohen's office the previous month. The Journal identified the official as Elliott Broidy, the party's deputy finance chairman, a financier who had been convicted of bribery in 2009.

In July 2018 Broidy announced he was ceasing payments, claiming that the agreement was no longer valid since Davidson had leaked information from it to Avenatti, a claim Davidson denies. Campos said this, too, makes no sense as the unauthorized disclosure of information would not be legal grounds to void the entire agreement; if that had happened, Broidy should have sued Davidson, since he had not represented Bechard since shortly after the agreement was concluded. After Campos wrote the column, Broidy's current attorney told Campos "this agreement was not on anyone else's behalf." Shortly afterward, Bechard sued Davidson, Avenatti and Broidy, alleging breach of contract; the details were not available as the complaint was under seal.

The agreement had been signed "David Dennison", for Cohen's client, the same pseudonym that Trump had used when signing his agreement with Daniels while she had been represented by Davidson. New York magazine columnist Paul Campos suspected that, based on the timing of the arrangement, Broidy may have accepted responsibility that was in actuality Trump's. Campos noted that the first of eight $200,000 installments had been paid to Davidson in early December 2017, just before Bechard, like McDougal and Daniels before her, fired Davidson since she believed he was putting the opposing client's interest above hers. Two days later, Trump agreed to a hastily-scheduled meeting with Broidy, who shortly thereafter received a $600 million contract to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, whose leadership he had been telling all year he could get personal access to Trump if he were elected.

McDougal retained Davidson in June 2016, agreeing that he would get 45% of anything she received in connection with the story, which she saw primarily as a way to relaunch herself as a voice for women's health and wellness. In her later lawsuit, she claimed he told this was the industry standard, which she learned later was not so. He began negotiating with American Media, Inc. (AMI), parent company of The National Enquirer and some fitness magazines where McDougal thought she might be able write columns.

Hogan continues to seek the source of the tape. In 2015 the portion in which he had used racist language was made public by The National Enquirer, causing World Wrestling Entertainment to fire him and remove him from its hall of fame. After his lawsuit against Gawker, which had caused controversy when it was revealed to have been funded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who had his own grudge against the site, ended the next year with a verdict that forced it into bankruptcy and shut it down, Hogan sued Davidson, along with Gawker, Loyd, Burbridge and several other persons and businesses connected to them in state court, alleging they conspired with Gawker so the site could obtain the recordings later published by the Enquirer to persuade Hogan to drop his suit. Davidson has represented himself; in early 2018 the court denied his motion to compel arbitration. He has moved to have the case against him dismissed.

Davidson responded that he had paid more than the published rate for Montgomery's stay in rehab since he had paid on an installment plan, and denied that the payments to Blatt and Quinlan were compensation for referring Montgomery to him. However he could not explain the larger initial payment, and after Bral threatened he would not only sue Davidson for malpractice but make an ethical complaint to the state bar, Davidson capitulated and paid Bral's clients the extra money to avoid a possible disbarment. He was not done representing them, as it turned out—when reports that Sheen was not only HIV positive but paying Montgomery to keep to quiet about it surfaced on a Hollywood gossip blog in 2014, she asked Davidson to take care of the situation, fearing that Sheen would use the posts as an excuse to stop the payments, and he was eventually able to pay the blog's editors to delete the stories. Sheen finally went public with his HIV status in 2015, saying he was tired of being "shaken down", and ending his settlement obligations. The day beforehand, Davidson had registered the web domain charliesheenlawsuit.com.

Some of the lawyers who have represented counterparties in negotiations with Davidson speak well of him. "For the niche he has carved out—which I guess most people would shy away from—he's always struck me as honorable and a man of his word", Mark Geragos, who estimated to The Smoking Gun that he has represented celebrities on whom Davidson's clients have material approximately 10 times, told Bastone. "He's more interested in making money for his clients rather than getting publicity for himself", said Martin Singer, attorney for Charlie Sheen. Cohen told Redden that Davidson had "always been professional, ethical and a true gentleman."

Davidson arranged for Montgomery to enter a rehabilitation facility owned by a friend and paid her cash advances afterwards. Eventually he negotiated a $2 million settlement with Sheen, payable in installments over the next five years as long as she kept the actor's HIV status to herself. After Montgomery and De Anda married in 2013, they fired Davidson.

Loyd said Davidson told him, if he was asked, to say he found the videos on a used laptop, instead of the account he had previously been giving, despite Loyd's insistence that that was what had actually happened. Davidson cited attorney–client confidentiality in refusing to comment on this to The Smoking Gun. He soon approached Hogan's attorney, David Houston, and began negotiating an agreement to return the tapes to Hogan, who was primarily eager to keep the portions where he used racial slurs from public view.

Davidson has become best known for representing clients who have, or claim to have, documentary material that could adversely affect the reputations of celebrities they were acquainted with or worked for if made public, but will return those materials to the celebrity without sharing them with the media if they are paid sufficiently. He has been sued by three of those celebrities alleging extortion. During negotiations over Hulk Hogan's sex tape in 2012, he was detained by FBI agents conducting a sting operation, although no charges were ever filed.

In early 2012 TMZ began to cover reports of a sex tape featuring former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and a woman later identified as the wife of a friend of Hogan's, Tampa-area shock jock Todd Clem, known legally as his on-air name Bubba the Love Sponge. They had been made available to TMZ and another website that published them by Matt Loyd, a former intern with Clem's radio show, who had come to dislike his former boss. Loyd claimed he had found the tapes inside a box set of DVDs during a garage sale fundraiser Clem held. Law enforcement later came to believe they had in fact been stolen, but never charged Loyd.

The following year Davidson began representing another adult-film actress who claimed potential injury at Sheen's hands. The actor had paid Kira Montgomery, who performed under the name Taylor Tilden, for sex and finding other partners for him. In 2011 he disclosed to her that he was HIV-positive, news that greatly distressed her since she feared he might have infected her as well (she would later test negative). Jason Quinlan, a friend she confided in put her in touch with Kevin Blatt, who had helped market a Paris Hilton sex tape and sometimes sold other stories about celebrities to tabloid news outlets around the world. Blatt in turn suggested she retain Davidson.

Around the same time that Davidson was finalizing the deal between McDougal and AMI, he was representing another woman who alleged a contemporaneous affair with Trump: adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, known onscreen as Stormy Daniels. In that case the counterparty was Trump himself, represented by Cohen. Davidson told CNN he had first represented her in this matter when gossip site TheDirty.com reported rumors of the relationship in 2011. Ultimately she received $130,000 for her silence; at that time he denied rumors of the affair.

In the mid-2010s, two women, adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, retained Davidson to negotiate payments for them in exchange for refraining from publicly discussing their sexual encounters with Donald Trump, who was represented by Michael Cohen; Daniels accepted $130,000 in November 2016, shortly before Trump was elected U.S. President, in return for signing a nondisclosure agreement. This has drawn Davidson into the controversy over where the money ultimately came from and why it was not reported as a campaign expense; he has been cooperating with special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation. Daniels and McDougal have both since said they were inadequately represented by Davidson, accusing him of colluding with Cohen to protect Trump's interests. The former has filed a legal malpractice suit against Davidson; he has countersued Daniels and new counsel Michael Avenatti alleging defamation.

There have been other complaints about Davidson's adherence to legal ethics. The State Bar of California suspended his license in 2010 for incompetence in representing a client and other willful violations of rules of professional conduct after several incidents reported to it; a two-year suspension was reduced to 90 days. However, a report in The Smoking Gun alleged that even during that short period Davidson continued to practice law, and detailed many other questionable practices on his part, such as possibly splitting fees with non-lawyers like a TMZ assistant producer who referred clients to him.

After a few years, Davidson's practice specialty moved toward civil law. He began taking personal injury cases, and resolving contract disputes. He also branched out into entertainment law, where he took on some notable clients, particularly adult film stars. Davidson and his wife bought not only a house in Studio City, but a 5,600-square-foot (520 m) vacation home in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a wine cellar, putting green and backyard pool with spa. Davidson represented several children who were sexually abused by their kindergarten teacher Mark. That matter was settled before trial for $139 million. Davidson also has represented clients who sought settlements in return for non-disclosure agreements with many celebrities, including Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Tila Tequila, Charlie Sheen, Verne Troyer, Lindsay Lohan and Hulk Hogan.In the mid-2010s, two women, adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, retained Davidson to negotiate payments for them in exchange for refraining from publicly discussing their sexual encounters with Donald Trump, who was represented by Michael Cohen; Daniels accepted $130,000 in November 2016, shortly before Trump was elected U.S. President, in return for signing a non-disclosure agreement. In 2016, Davidson negotiated a settlement of $1.6 million for Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard10 from an unnamed Republican Party official.

These cases resulted in three complaints against Davidson to the state bar. In 2010 he accepted culpability for incompetence in the practice of law and willful violations of professional rules, including mishandling client funds and failure to keep a client informed of the progress of their case; he was suspended from practicing law for two years, to be followed by three years' probation requiring attendance at an ethics class and regular updates from other lawyers. However, after other lawyers filed letters of their own with the bar noting his lack of prior misconduct and "overall honesty", that suspension was reduced to 90 days. Davidson says that the neglected cases that led to the suspension were the result of being "spread a little too thin."

Blatt and Quinlan were not the only people who benefited during the early 2010s from referring clients to Davidson. Mike Walters, an assistant producer and news editor at TMZ on TV who became almost as visible as site founder and host Harvey Levin, frequently broke stories about purported sex tapes of various celebrities on the show and site. He often told those who came to him with the tapes, or claims to have one, to retain Davidson. Among those who Walters allegedly steered to Davidson were a Playboy Playmate who accused Hugh Hefner's son of assault and a woman who claimed Lindsay Lohan had assaulted her in rehab. Davidson brokered a payment from TMZ to her after she was fired for violating patient confidentiality and tried to arrange for a meeting between her and Lohan that would be furtively photographed to suggest the two had settled their dispute; after the woman fired Davidson her next attorney told The Smoking Gun Davidson's actions had not been in the client's best interest.

While he has downplayed the role that that business plays in his legal practice, he is aware that has defined him and that he has been seen as the lawyer to retain in these cases. On the recorded conversations in the Hulk Hogan case he is heard telling David Houston, Hogan's attorney, that these cases are "my specialty"; Houston said he was "amazed that there was a lawyer actually making a living doing this". Both Bastone, who reported on what seemed to him like an effort on Davidson's part to blackmail him out of writing his story, and Redden likened him to Saul Goodman, the profit-driven lawyer in the TV series Breaking Bad who helps launder profits from illegal drug sales. Kevin Blatt, who had referred some clients to Davidson in the early 2010s, now no longer does because "he flies too close to the fucking sun".

Tila Tequila alleged that Davidson had threatened to market a sex tape she and her former boyfriend had made on a 2008 vacation overseas if she did not consent to it. If she did, she claimed he said, she would get a share of the proceeds as other celebrities had with sex tapes of themselves. However, Tequila had two new adult films coming out, and neither she nor Vivid Entertainment, the production company, wanted to compete with themselves.

Davidson's first experience with potentially embarrassing personal information about a celebrity came in 2007. Two years earlier, a Public Storage in Culver City had auctioned off the contents of a locker rented by Paris Hilton after she had failed to pay an overdue bill. The buyer, who had paid almost $3,000 for the collection of personal records, including diaries, nude photos and videos as well as medical and financial records, soon in turn sold them to a man who, without identifying himself to her, offered her $150,000 in cash for everything.

Fourteen months later, in January 2007, the website ParisExposed.com went online, offering unrestricted access to digitized copies of the documents and media that had been in the locker for visitors willing to pay almost $40 for the privilege. Within its first 24 hours it received over a million visits. Very soon afterwards, lawyers for Hilton sued in federal court, claiming the website was both copyright infringement and invasion of privacy; a month later the court agreed and granted them an injunction barring further publication and dissemination of the material. The site was registered to what Hilton's attorneys believed was a fictitious individual in Panama; it was hosted on servers in the Dutch city of Haarlem.

In 2006 and 2007 Karen McDougal, Playboy' s 1998 Playmate of the Year, had an affair with New York real estate developer Donald Trump, at that time host of the reality television show The Apprentice. A decade later, just after Trump had secured the delegates necessary to win the Republican nomination for President in the 2016 election, another former Playmate, Carrie Stevens began naming McDougal and several other past Playmates she claimed Trump had had affairs with on her Twitter feed. Until then McDougal had had no intention of sharing details of her relationship publicly, but a friend urged her to "get out it front of it". To that end she hired Davidson to negotiate with any interested media outlets.

After graduating from Brockton High School in 1989, he attended Boston College. Since he could not afford housing fees but wanted to live on-campus, a friend converted an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 m × 3.0 m) closet in a six-person suite into a space where Davidson could sleep. He graduated with a B.S. in economics in 1993. He studied law at Whittier Law School. He graduated in May of 2000.He immediately took and passed the California Bar Exam and was sworn in on December 5, 2000. For the next two years Davidson worked in government, with the state legislature and later at the Plymouth County district attorney's office. He began applying to law schools, and was accepted at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, California. After moving cross-country to study there, he graduated in 2000 and was admitted to the California bar at the end of the year. Davidson’s practice began as criminal defense, he also notably has represented plaintiffs in civil torts such as medical malpractice, as well as clients negotiating non-disclosure agreements and settlements with high profile celebrities and government officials.

In the later 2000s Davidson faced serious legal and financial difficulties. As the economy worsened, he and his wife were unable to keep up their mortgage payments, and both the Scottsdale and Studio City houses went into foreclosure. The federal and state governments had taken out liens on them for unpaid income taxes. Davidson was also facing charges of professional misconduct.

Keith M. Davidson (born 1971) Davidson is an attorney and founder of Davidson and Associates (also known as KmdLaw), a law firm based in Beverly Hills, California, United States. ; he currently resides near Lake Sherwood. While his practice began as criminal defense, he has since represented plaintiffs in civil torts such as medical malpractice, and managed professional boxers including Manny Pacquiao and James Toney. A native of Brockton, Massachusetts, he settled in Southern California after studying law at Whittier.

Davidson was born in Massachusetts in 1971, and raised in Brockton, a working-class suburb of Boston, in a large Irish American family whose several generations of firefighters included Davidson's father. Brockton calls itself the "City of Champions", since title-winning boxers Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler were natives. During the latter's tenure as middleweight champion during the 1980s, Davidson and other local children often ran after the fighter in the streets as he ran while training for fights.