One of the government prosecutors had been urging my attorney for weeks to persuade me to take a plea. Over the last few days, he’d even resorted to ultimatums: if I didn’t agree to plead guilty and settle the case, he warned, the government would put me through a revolving door of criminal trials. If they lost in one jurisdiction, they’d try me in another; if they won, they’d press for the maximum sentence. It wouldn’t matter to them whether or not they got convictions because they’d have me locked up without bail the whole time.