Part of their game is controlled burns, public humiliation. Notice this doesn’t happen with the truly powerful though, just the ones trying to climb the ladder. These organizations look for upwardly motivated people, who are hungry, willing, and naive. Some are led into it willingly some have too much pride and arrogance to see it.

Similarly to how Bill Cooper would talk about how the military did him with “alien” files. The gave him access. Had him digging through some plausible and some very insane fake shit, and they wanted him to spill the beans to propagate some fake bullshit about aliens. He deduced this at least. Not everyone catches on.

So hypothetically this happens to Avenatti, they show him some cool shit knowing he’s a show off and arrogant. They show him hoping he’s gonna incriminate himself. If the whole plan backfires badly, there’s an easy low level arrest that the cops can make to parade for the public, and like the Kennedy assassination we just move on and never find the rest of the team.