The Supreme Court rejected Michael Avenatti’s appeal to overturn his fraud of Nike in a crushing blow to Stormy Daniels’s former lawyer.

The court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari on Tuesday, leaving the lower court’s decision in place.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not take part in the decision, and no reasoning was listed for his absence, though Avenatti was involved in the justice’s controversial confirmation hearing, representing a possible conflict.

Avenatti may file a petition for a rehearing of the decision within 25 days.

A lower court previously sentenced Avenatti to 2 1/2 years in prison for trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike by threatening the company with bad publicity. At the time, he said he wanted his children “to be ashamed” of their father. He was charged with two extortion-related counts and one charge of fraud.

Avenatti already saw an appeals court uphold his convictions.

The lawyer got involved with Nike as part of a case in which he represented a youth basketball coach litigating against the company for alleged unlawful payments to high school athletes. He pressured the company to pay his client and hire him and another lawyer to carry out an internal investigation into the matter or he would go public with the allegations.

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Daniels’s former lawyer is already facing steep legal penalties. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in a California fraud scheme and four years for stealing from Daniels in a case in which he nabbed a large chunk of a $800,000 book advance for the porn star.

Avenatti was once considered a “liberal folk hero” for taking on former President Donald Trump in Daniels’s lawsuit against him seeking to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement preventing her from speaking about their alleged affair. Trump is facing criminal charges in New York City for his part in a hush money case involving payments to Daniels to prevent her from publicizing the same alleged affair.