Weasel of The Week: Joe Tacopina

 The late Andy Warhol once said that in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes.

Joe "Defensive" Tacopina's 15 minutes are just about up.

The veteran barrister went before Judge Lewis Kaplan three different times in the past week, either solo or in the company of in-over-her-head Alina Habba-Dabba-Doo, to try to coax Kaplan into revealing the identities of the jurors who will be present for the E. Jean Carroll case, due to start April 25. Kaplan stonewalled Tacopina every time, and, as Farron Cousins explains, Tacopina skipped a meeting that he should've attended that would've saved him all the grief.

Blinded by fame and the association with a disgraced celebrity, Tacopina would've known a lot sooner that Kaplan was adamant about keeping the jury anonymous had he actually done what he was supposed to do and attend pre-trial meetings instead of going on a media tour with Fox No News, MSNBC, Newsnacks, et al, to milk those 15 minutes. As a result, Tacopina gets a set of Weasel ears. Shirking legal responsibility will do that every time.