Michael Avenatti was arrested and charged with bank and wire fraud on Monday. The lawyer gained media popularity while representing Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump. Because of his no-holds-barred approach in publicly accusing and attacking Trump, Avenatti quickly became a darling of Democrats and a popular Leftmedia talkinghead — especially with CNN, which gave him seemingly unlimited airtime to level his attacks against Trump.

In fact, due to Avenatti’s meteoric rise in popularity among the leftist anti-Trump crowd, he began floating the notion of running for the presidency. Recall CNN’s Brian Stelter’s positive response to the idea, commenting last year with Avenatti at his side, “I think President Obama also had a lot of TV star power and that helped him pre-Trump. But Trump is more evidence of this. And looking ahead to 2020, one reason I’m taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news.”

But the wheels of the Avenatti 2020 train began to seriously wobble last year following allegations of domestic violence. He then lost his Daniels lawsuit against Trump. But the wheels finally fell off with his despicable Julie Swetnick attack against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Avenatti is the classic example of a grifter, the fast-working swindler and scam artist who serves to reinforce all those negative stereotypes Americans have of lawyers. And many Democrats and much of the Leftmedia, especially CNN, fell for his shtick because they were blinded by their Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Finally, an ironic twist — last August, Avenatti made an appearance on “The View” where he was asked about his sexual fantasies, presumably due to the fact that Fox News’s Tucker Carlson referred to him as the “creepy porn lawyer.” Avenatti responded, “All my sexual fantasies involve handcuffs.” Well, it appears that his fantasies have become reality.