Three months later, Avenatti was arrested. Four months later, I met him in a common room of the all-glass, all-glitz apartment he was renting for $10,000 a month in Century City. The day earlier, prosecutors in California had handed down a 36-count indictment. I was certain he would cancel the interview, until he texted me that day confirming the address and the time of our meeting. In the interview, which we published last spring, Avenatti talked about why he would have made the right candidate to face off against Trump in 2020—a gutter fighter-meets-media-generator fit to handle this particular era and this particular president. A few months earlier, when I interviewed Avenatti on stage at a Vanity Fair conference in Los Angeles, he told me that he was organizing a ground game in Iowa and gearing up for a potential run (in December of 2018, a few months after that interview and a few months before he was indicted, but just after he had been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, which he denied and which he was never formally charged with, he publicly announced he would not be throwing his hat into the ring). He talked about how he felt like the government was going after him because he was “one of the biggest threats, if not the biggest threat” to Trump. “Anyone who thinks differently is a fool,” he said. We talked about the media attention he got, how he fucking loved it and sought it out and bathed in it. “I couldn’t believe how unbelievably great everything was,” he told me, retelling stories he’d already told me, about the cable appearances he’d made and speeches he’d given and crowds he drew and compliments strangers delivered. And we talked about his own hubris or ego or narcissism or the cocktail of all three. It takes a certain type of person to be allegedly defrauding clients, extorting major corporations, failing to pay taxes, stealing money from one of the most public clients in history while contemplating a bid for the presidency and frequenting every greenroom this country has to offer. “I have said many, many times over the last year, this is either going to end really, really well, or really, really badly,” he said. “I am most fearful of the fact that the rate of descent is greater than the rate of ascent. Some would argue at this point that I flew too close to the sun. As I sit here today, yes, absolutely, I know I did. No question. Icarus.”