After a year caught in a downward spiral, the disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti—who achieved fame representing the porn star Stormy Daniels—spent the past two weeks in solitary confinement, in a cell once occupied by the Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, Andrew Rice (Uganda, 2002-04) writes in New York Magazine.

“On Thursday, though, Avenatti’s very bad year reached what, to him, must have felt like a nadir,” Andrew writes. “Sitting at the defense table in a stately courtroom in the old federal courthouse on Centre Street, he kept shooting searching glances into the mostly empty gallery. No CNN reporter in sight. The network was instead broadcasting gavel-to-gavel coverage of Donald Trump’s impeachment—a political crisis that Avenatti predicted and, in some ways, helped to create. The paparazzi were staking out a nearby state courthouse, where a procession of actresses and models were testifying against Harvey Weinstein. Avenatti was not even the most famous defendant in a two-block area. His story arc was wrapping up, and no one was tuning in.”

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