a Trump-related scandal is like, suggested, in a note Griffin shared with me, that she stay quiet for a while and take up meditation.

The most disturbing advice came via email from a member of the board of directors of the CBS Corporation, Arnold Kopelson, an Academy Award–winning producer who Griffin used to consider a friend. Kopelson emailed Griffin with a prewritten letter to President Trump that he said she should mail to him, and which Griffin shared with me.

The letter includes phrases like, “Now with my world crumbling around me, I am listening for the first time about the great things you have done and are doing. How stupid I was to follow the lies from the ‘Left.’ It took my terrible mistake to finally see the falsedon’t like people who rock the boat. She acknowledged that revealing details about people like Kopelson, Cooper, and Zucker is unusual, and could harm her future employment prospects.

But Griffin occupies an unusual space in comedy: Like her late friend and mentor Joan Rivers, she has constantly struggled to be taken seriously, but managed to build a substantial fan base that has enriched her and made her very famous. Her concert agent showed me Ticketmaster data indicating that over the past 13 years, Griffin has sold over 1.2 million tickets to her shows.

Griffin says she wants to focus on First Amendment issues now. She’s hoping to organize a First Amendment concert with the ACLU, and she’s working on a documentary film of her upcoming international tour, as well as