Who is Mark Geragos? Lawyer linked to Avenatti extortion has defended stars from Michael Jackson to Winona Ryder
Criminal attorney Mark Geragos, who has been identified by multiple news outlets as the unindicted co-conspirator in the Michael Avenatti extortion case, has built a career out of defending the infamous.
Dubbed the “bad boy defender” by ABC News, his long roster of high-profile clients includes Chris Brown, for the felony assault of Rihanna, and Michael Jackson, on child molestation charges, as well as convicted murderer Scott Peterson. But Geragos, who has his own L.A.-based firm, has had his share of “bad” females as well, defending Susan McDougal, made famous by the Whitewater scandal in the late 1990s, which put him on people’s radars, and repping Winona Ryder in her shoplifting case, which kept him there.
As an ABC segment noted, “His job is to help people get away with murder” — or, in Ryder’s case, stealing $5,560 worth of merchandise, including a $760 Marc Jacobs sweater and $80 cashmere Donna Karan socks, from Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.
It was while repping the famous, Geragos became a celebrity himself. McDougal, former President Bill Clinton’s one-time business partner in Whitewater, took some of the credit, telling the New York Times in 2003, “I always tease him about my case launching him into the limelight. He was just absolutely perfect.” When she was fresh out of prison, he helped her get an acquittal on embezzlement and failure to file tax returns charges.
Geragos, who comes from a family of lawyers, went on to regularly appear as a talking head on cable news — CNN has dropped him since the Avenatti claims came out — and became the author of the 2013 book Mistrial: An Inside Look at How the Criminal Justice System Works… and Sometimes Doesn’t. But legal work is his bread and butter — though he’s said he’s more than an attorney.
“You’re not just their lawyer, they confess things to you,” Geragos told ABC News. “You’re somebody they come to for guidance and counseling. So it becomes a very close and unrelenting relationship.”
Geragos defended Clinton’s brother, Roger, in a drunken driving case. He was Robert Downey Jr.’s man when it came to fighting drug charges. He also represented Gary Condit, the former California congressman who was romantically linked to the murdered Washington intern Chandra Levy.
When Geragos repped Ryder in 2001 and 2002 — after the O.J. Simpson trial, when the American public had developed an odd craving for real-life crime trials — he became a media fixture himself, driving his doe-eyed client to court in his fancy sports car and helping her get past the pool of photographers. But the trial was a circus and while she only served probation, it damaged her career greatly.
He went on to have two huge clients soon after, juggling Jackson’s molestation case in 2004 as well as Peterson’s murder trial. Geragos was there at Jackson’s arraignment — when the King of Pop infamously climbed on the top of an SUV to wave to fans — but he was replaced on that case because the Peterson trial was equally consuming. It turned out to be double losses for him as Peterson, who was accused of murdering his pregnant wife, was convicted and put on death row. Though the murderer was oddly turned into a superstar receiving fan letters in jail from female admirers.
Geragos has also repped sports figures, including Mike Tyson and recently Colin Kaepernick. He also took on Greg Anderson’s case, the personal trainer of baseball player Barry Bonds, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute steroids.
He’s had a long-running relationship with Brown, continuously repping him during his many legal ups and downs. Most recently, Geragos worked for Jussie Smollett, who was completely exonerated in Chicago on Tuesday. He was also the attorney for recently deceased soap star Kristoff St. John.
While Geragos has had a mixed record of wins and losses, after he lost the Peterson case, it was said that wouldn’t necessarily hurt his career. At the time, an equally high-profile attorney, Gary Bostwick said, “In Los Angeles, people like to say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Defense attorney Mickey Sherman said clients hired Geragos because of his media savvy. Nancy Grace, who frequently sparred with Geragos on cable TV, called him “clever, slick and likable. He knows every trick in the book.” And Geragos’s own website once touted himself as “arguably the hottest defense lawyer of the moment.”
Geragos’s reputation certainly precedes him though. At the time of the Peterson trial, L.A. DJ John Kobylt from The John and Ken Show quipped, “If Mark Geragos represents you it means you’re guilty.” That said, Geragos has said he has standards. “If I’m going to represent somebody, I think at the very least they deserve someone who can find the good in them,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2003. “I don’t think most people are evil. I think sometimes people are demonized unfairly.”
Avenatti, the former lawyer for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, was arrested by federal authorities on Monday and just hours later Geragos was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, an alleged elaborate plot to extort millions from Nike. The Associated Press is among the outlets reporting that Geragos is alleged to have schemed with Avenatti. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Avenatti consulted Geragos in November when he was arrested over an alleged domestic violence incident. No charges were filed.
Avenatti has denied the charges in the extortion case. Geragos, who has not been charged, has not yet responded to Yahoo Entertainment’s request for comment, but we will update this story when he does.
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