We Build The Wall founder imprisoned for fraud

• April 26, 2023

By Jake Offenhartz | Associated Press

NEW YORK — The co-founder of a fundraising group linked to Steve Bannon that promised to help Donald Trump construct a wall along the southern U.S. border was sentenced to four years and three months in prison on Wednesday for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors.

Brian Kolfage, a decorated Air Force veteran who lost both of his legs and an arm in the Iraq War, previously pleaded guilty for his role in siphoning donations from the We Build the Wall campaign.

A co-defendant, financier Andrew Badolato, was also sentenced to three years for aiding the effort. He had also pleaded guilty. A third man involved in siphoning funds from the wall project, Colorado businessman Tim Shea, won’t be sentenced until June.

Kolfage and Badolato were also ordered to pay $25 million in restitution to the victims.

Absent from the case was Bannon, Trump’s former top political adviser. He was initially arrested aboard a luxury yacht and faced federal fraud charges along with the other men, but Trump pardoned him during his final hours in office.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought new, state charges against Bannon last year. He is awaiting trial. Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state offenses. Bannon has called the case “nonsense.”

Kolfage, Badolato and Shea were not pardoned by Trump, leaving them to face the prospect of years in prison.

Prosecutors said the scheme was hatched by Kolfage, who served as the public face of the effort as it raised more than $25 million from donors across the country. He repeatedly assured the public he would “not take a penny” from the campaign.

As money poured into the cause, Kolfage and his partner, Shea, turned to Bannon and Badolato for help creating a nonprofit, We Build the Wall, Inc. The four defendants then took steps to funnel the money to themselves for personal gain, prosecutors said.

An attorney for Badolato, Kelly Kramer, described Bannon as “a leader and primary beneficiary” of the scheme, noting that his own client received a much smaller payout than the pardoned associate.

While prosecutors acknowledged that Badolato profited the least of the four defendants, they described him as the “connective tissue” between Kolfage and Bannon, helping to direct the kickbacks between the two parties.

Kolfage, 41, told Judge Analisa Torres that he was “remorseful, disgusted, humiliated.” He said he had not anticipated the scale of donations that would flood in for the cause and soon found himself drifting away from his initial goal, which he said was “putting a spotlight on the country’s broken immigration system.”

“I made a promise not to personally benefit and I broke that promise,” he said.

Torres said the defendants not only cheated their donors but contributed to a “chilling effect on civic participation” by tarnishing the reputation of political fundraising.

“The fraudsters behind We Build The Wall injured the body politic,” she said.

Kolfage received more than $350,000 in donor funds, which he spent on personal expenses that included boat payments, a luxury SUV and cosmetic surgery, prosecutors said in a court filing.Bannon was accused of taking more than $1 million through a separate nonprofit, then secretly paying some of it back to Kolfage.

Badolato, 58, and Shea also stole hundreds of thousands from fundraisers as well, prosecutors said.

As part of a plea deal, Kolfage and Badolato agreed not to challenge a sentence within the agreed-upon range: between four to five years for Kolfage and 3 1/2 to four years for Badolato.

An attorney for Kolfage previously argued that his client should avoid prison time given his lack of criminal history and severe disability.

Some sections of a border barrier were built by We Build the Wall on private lands, but the nonprofit is now defunct.

​ Orange County Register 

The pandemic brought a man closer to his neighbors — and inspired his album of songs about each of them

• April 26, 2023

Darcel Rockett | Chicago Tribune

When the world was isolating in pandemic bubbles, Alex Hardaway was channeling his inner Bob McGrath — the late “Sesame Street” character who sang the “People in Your Neighborhood” song.

Hardaway began a marathon music project — his first solo album, called “Be My Neighborhood,” where he wrote a song for each of his neighbors in his 15-unit Andersonville apartment building. The album debuted Thursday.

During the height of the pandemic, Hardaway, a longtime employee at Chicago’s Oiistar Japanese restaurant, had started doing maintenance work around the building to chip some money off his rent. That led him to meet all his fellow tenants. The 33-year-old graduate of The Theatre School at DePaul University said a lot of his musical material comes from real life interactions.

“All the songs are kind of about me and my relationship with these people and my own psyche,” Hardaway said. “If you listen … you’ll hear that it’s a lot of second guessing and chewing on what interactions took place, or just a script of exact conversations that I just had with these people.”

It took the better part of three years for the Arlington, Texas, native to compose the music, write the lyrics, find professional orchestral musicians willing to play instruments on the album (for a modest fee) that matched the personality of each neighbor and get his work mastered by Adam Selzer, who has done audio production work for bands like the Lumineers, the Decemberists and She & Him. Hardaway played guitar, mandolin, bass, the ukulele and some percussion instruments while his girlfriend, Tuckie White, an actor, playwright and writer, sang backup vocals in a coat closet turned studio.

The result is a folksy album with 13 songs with names like: “Kasey and the Girl She Lives With,” “Keva and Miranda,” “Shea and Sheena” and “Seamus.”

Seamus is a neighbor who tends to nod his head in greeting to Hardaway without engaging in a traditional sense. His song’s lyrics include:

“What you do is like a magic trick

slipping away in the blink of an eye

waving hands while looking confused

Has got to work for you most of the time.”

Hardaway said the “Leanne and Anthony” song centers on how people can be socially awkward and how they can send mixed signals. “We both had young dogs that would play together and I just could not keep the ball in the air conversationally with them,” he said. “It was dead silence most of the time and I chewed about that for a long time. We’re fine now, but when I was writing these songs, I was feeling like I would see them four blocks down the street, and we would make eye contact and they would just take a bold right. Like they thought there’s no way we’re gonna walk into that dude.’”

The musical interludes entail many of the things people who share walls endure — everything from noise created when your ceiling is someone else’s floor and convincing those we live by to give us a chance to show we’re good people.

Neighbor Tim Dean’s song tells of the day his cat didn’t survive a tussle with a neighbor’s dog. Hardaway described the moment when he had to tell Dean about the incident and why calling out to his late cat was futile.

“I was like, ‘Hey, I know you’re Tim and I’m Alex. I have some awful news, my friend,’” Hardaway said. “He just sat down and was like, ‘I cannot believe that happened.’ I wanted to write a song about that moment, because it’s so hard when you have to deliver news like that to someone you don’t know.”

Dean, a clinical psychologist, said he’s honored to be included in the project. His two favorite tracks are “Shea and Sheena” and “Larry.”

“Larry’s a very sweet man,” Dean said. “He worked for the CTA for like 30 years. His song is about him retiring. Larry is the one that helped my cat the most, took my cat to the vet. … Larry’s the other protagonist in my song.”

Sheena Roque knew about Hardaway’s album but has since moved to Evanston with her fiance, Shea. She admits to being a “keeping to herself” kind of person, but when she met Hardaway, it was refreshing.

“He’s the most neighborly neighbor we’ve ever had,” she said. “My fiance and I are planning on getting married sometime this year. I would love to play the song at the wedding because it’s a song about us.”

Alex Hardaway, who wrote a song about all of his neighbors in his 15-unit apartment building during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, is seen outside his Andersonville home on April 5, 2023. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

“I got really lucky because I met some really great humans making this thing,” Hardaway said. “This project snowballed into something I never imagined and the cherry on top came when Adam Selzer stepped in for the finishing touches.”

Hardaway reached out to Selzer on a jobs website with a long email about his project. Selzer, a producer from Portland, Oregon, responded. He said it’s not common to get a project as interesting as what Hardaway put together. Hardaway and Selzer said Andy Shauf’s 2016 album, “The Party,” which describes the people seen at a party, is the only album they’re aware of that takes a similar bent. Hardaway said it got him thinking about how the mundane could be musical.

“I’ve always been really drawn to albums that have some sort of common thread and his idea of using his apartment and creating all these worlds for these characters just sounded really interesting to me,” Selzer said. “Each song had a different featured orchestral instrument. And I thought that was so cool because it had this whole separate identity with an instrument that was unique to that song compared to the rest of the album.”

“Be My Neighborhood” was an uphill climb for Hardaway. He would create four or five songs for each person and he would then have to choose which best represented them.

“It started out as a big exercise, but it became way bigger than I thought it could be,” he said. “I’m just a chatty Texas boy and I like to find out what’s going on with people. I don’t know why I’m very curious, but if more than my mom hears this record, I’ll be thrilled.”

Hardaway says we can afford a bit more “Hello, neighbor! How was your day?” in our lives.

“It’s good to reach out to people,” he said. “When I pass people on the street, I try to smile and say ‘Howdy’ or something like that. Over the pandemic, I started talking to this older man who lives down the street, a retired flight attendant and a wonderful piano player. I told him I heard him through the window. Two days later, I’m in his apartment and he’s playing piano for me, feeding me wine and we’re getting into a deep conversation about where we’re from. It’s so interesting what can happen if you just look up, look someone in the eyes and say hello. It can take you a lot of places.”

“Be My Neighborhood” is available on platforms like Bandcamp . Follow @cowboy_shoes for more information.

___

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Ex-Fugees rapper Pras guilty in Chinese influence case

• April 26, 2023

By Holmes Lybrand | CNN

The rapper Pras Michel was found guilty in federal court in Washington on Wednesday of 10 criminal counts related to an international conspiracy reaching the highest levels of the US government.

The Grammy-winning artist and former member of the Fugees faced multiple counts over the failed conspiracy to help Malaysian businessman Jho Low and the Chinese government gain access to US officials, including former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Michel testified last week that Low paid Michel $20 million in 2012 in order to get a picture of himself with Obama and prosecutors alleged Michel funneled over $800,000 of that money to Obama’s campaign through a number of straw donors.

In his defense, Michel testified he never used the money at Low’s direction but instead saw it as his money which he could spend however he wanted.

“I could have bought 12 elephants with it,” he told the jury.

When Trump came to power in 2017 and investigations started to ramp up into Low and his alleged role in billions of dollars being embezzled from 1MBD, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, Low went to Michel again, prosecutors alleged.

According to the prosecutors, Low directed over $100 million to Michel to help push the government, including Trump, to drop its investigation into Low. Prosecutors also say Michel advocated for the extradition of a Chinese dissident, Guo Wengui, on behalf of the Chinese government.

Related Articles

Michel, however, testified he only tried to help Low find an attorney in the US and only told authorities about Guo because he thought he was a criminal. The former Fugees member also said the $100 million was for a media business he was starting and the investment wasn’t from Low.

Low, who was charged along with Michel, is believed to be in China. Guo has since been arrested and charged by the Justice Department with defrauding investors in an unrelated case.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

​ Orange County Register 

Colorado’s big snowpack powers massive ‘pulse’ of water being shot through Grand Canyon

• April 26, 2023

A huge amount of the water that flows down from Colorado’s snowy mountains into the West’s depleted Lake Powell reservoir is rocketing out of pipes this week to power a massive, simulated flood through the Grand Canyon — the first one in five years to try to revitalize canyon ecosystems the way nature once did.

Federal operators of the Glen Canyon Dam atop the Grand Canyon opened jets to begin this surge before sunrise Monday, sending what they described as “a pulse” of water whooshing through the Colorado River as it curves through the base of the canyon.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said they’ll maintain the surge until Thursday evening, ensuring a flow for 72 hours at 39,500 cubic feet per second of water.

This “High Flow Experiment” will require 270,000 acre-feet of water, federal officials said — enough to sustain more than half a million households for a year. By comparison, Denver Water typically captures 290,000 acre-feet of water, or more than 94 billion gallons, from rain and snow in Colorado over an entire year for city supplies.

The water gushing out of dam jets this week normally would have flowed gradually over the month of April out of Lake Powell into the river. Eventually, the water will end up in Lake Mead, the key supply for Arizona, California and Nevada.

Federal officials based their recent decision to allow the simulated floods on the relatively heavy high mountain snowpack this year along headwaters of the Colorado River, which begins west of Denver near Grand Lake.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest snow survey data this week showed snowpack in the upper Colorado River Basin at 129% of the 1991-2020 norm. Federal hydrologists have estimated 14.7 million acre-feet of water this summer will flow from Colorado, Wyoming and Utah into Lake Powell.

Since 2018, federal dam operators have declined to release water for simulated flood surges due to long-term drought and anxieties around record-low reservoir water levels, linked by scientists to climate warming and aridification of the Southwest — transformations that have left Lake Powell and Lake Mead less than a quarter full. Yet the nation’s 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act requires efforts to ensure ecological health in the canyon, and officials established a program that includes simulated floods.

Federal officials this week declined to comment as water surged.

Dry times across the Southwest, and higher temperatures that over the past two decades reduced overall annual water in the Colorado River, have forced federal dam operators to prioritize keeping as much as possible in Lake Powell. Simulated floods for ecological purposes in the Grand Canyon became a casualty.

Last week, the environmental advocacy group American Rivers declared the Colorado River the nation’s most “endangered” river due to a lack of flooding. This week, American Rivers leaders applauded the surge as “a critical step” toward reviving the Grand Canyon.

A dead fish is seen near the shore in the low water levels on April 12, 2023, at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

“The damage to the ecosystems in the Grand Canyon has been substantial” over the past five years, American Rivers spokesman Sinjin Eberle said, describing harm caused by dams, which block sand and other sediments essential for aquatic life and canyon habitat.

Clear, colder-than-natural water released from the dam atop the canyon year after year “is eroding sand off beaches every day. Aquatic life and vegetation depend on those beaches. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of rocks and tamarisk,” Eberle said, referring to invasive shrubs that thrive and out-compete native species when dams lead to regularized water flows.

In Colorado, water policy officials declined to take a position on the simulated flood. But they acknowledged the environmental benefits in the canyon.

“The intent of this release is to pick up existing sediment in the canyon and deposit it downstream,” said Michelle Garrison, the state’s representative in a federal stakeholders advisory group that is part of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program.

Denver Water “is supportive of the environmental flow program” in the Grand Canyon, utility manager Jim Lochhead said, lauding the effort by multiple agencies that “come together to shift water releases — not increase overall releases — in order to mimic spring hydrology through the basin, which helps to improve beaches, sandbars and aquatic habitats.”

The Glen Canyon Dam holds back Colorado River water, which forms Lake Powell, seen from the air on April 15, 2023, in Page, Arizona. The flight for aerial photography was provided by LightHawk.(Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

In 1963, the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam atop the Grand Canyon disrupted essential natural processes and created Lake Powell. Sand and other sediments that for centuries moved downriver, scouring surfaces and creating beaches, suddenly were backed up on the reservoir side of that dam. And the regularized, steady flows of clear water, devoid of sediment, gradually are transforming the canyon.

During the simulated spring flood, U.S. Geological Survey scientists are monitoring the effects on fish populations and aquatic insects.

At the Grand Canyon Trust, officials devoted to protecting the river and canyon called on federal authorities to find a way to conduct future simulated floods — even during dry times.

“We long have prioritized hydropower. We long have prioritized water users. The environment is always the last priority,” the trust’s water advocacy director Jen Pelz said. “We need to figure out how to balance competing interests in a way that honors the environment.”

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.

​ Orange County Register 

E. Jean Carroll testifies: ‘Donald Trump raped me’

• April 26, 2023

By Lauren del Valle | CNN

Former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll took the stand Wednesday morning in her battery and defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump.

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll testified. “He lied and shattered my reputation and I’m here to try to get my life back.”

Carroll is suing Trump for battery and defamation, alleging that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the spring of 1996 and then defamed her years later when she went public with the allegations. Trump has repeatedly denied her allegations.

On the stand, Carroll recalled being “delighted” to be shopping with Trump, thinking it’d be a great story to tell friends.

“Well, it was such a funny New York scene,” Carroll said she thought at the time. “I love to give advice and here was Donald Trump asking me for advice about buying a present.”

She was not at all fearful of Trump, who was friendly and very funny. “I was absolutely enchanted, I could only think of it as a scene that is such a great story,” Carroll said.

The tone of their conversation was “very joshing and light” as they moved through the store.

Carroll was too focused on Trump to notice anyone else once they took the escalator from the first floor, she testified.

“I wasn’t looking, I was watching him and watching that I didn’t fall when the escalator hit the top.”

Carroll recalled she was probably flirting with Trump the whole time before the alleged assault, not thinking it was intimate or serious.

When the two made their way to the lingerie department, Carroll said the “comedy was escalating” but it never occurred to her that Trump might try to rape her.

Zeroing in on a sheer gray bodysuit, Trump told Carroll to try it on, she said. She jokingly told him he should try it on instead.

Carroll had no intention to try on the lingerie, she testified Wednesday, but followed Trump’s gesture into the dressing room thinking the moment could be a funny “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

“I didn’t picture anything about what was about to happen,” she said Wednesday. “That open door has plagued me for years because I just walked into it, walked in.”

Carroll recounted how Trump allegedly shoved her against the wall despite her struggles and eventually inserted his fingers and then his penis inside her.

She recalled the pain she felt in the back of her head and her vagina.

Growing emotional on the stand, Carroll took a long pause as her attorney asked what she did after Trump allegedly forced himself inside her.

“When you ask me what I did in that moment,” Carroll said, stuttering through tears, “I always think — I always think of why I walked in there to get myself in that situation. But I’m proud to say I did get out, I got my knee up and pushed him back.”

Testimony from former store manager

Related Articles

Before Carroll took the stand, former Bergdorf Goodman Women’s Store Manager Cheryl Beall testified for under an hour as Carroll’s first witness in the civil trial.

Beall worked at the luxury department store for a decade until about 1998, and had an office on the sixth floor adjacent to the lingerie department where Carroll has alleged Trump raped her.

She walked the jury through a floor plan of the sixth floor from the relevant time period, describing the layout and fitting rooms on that floor as a wooden-walled room with walls that met the ceiling. The fitting room door locked automatically when closed, she testified.

Beall said the store had a practice of keeping fitting room doors closed while not in use, but they’d “regularly” be left open.

Bergdorf Goodman scheduled at least one person to monitor each department at all times but it was not uncommon that the area on the sixth floor would be left unmanned, especially on a slow evening, Beall said.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

​ Orange County Register 

Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified trustees OK creepy plan to censor books

• April 26, 2023

It’s ironic that a novel about the Iranian revolution initially drew the ire of conservative school-board members at the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. That debate – and concern about some language used by the author – sparked the district’s passage of a new plan that makes the elected trustees the final arbiter of books that the district uses in its curriculum.

The board ultimately approved the use of “Persepolis: The Story of Childhood,” which documents the oppressive tactics of the Islamic Republic. Unlike in Iran, the United States champions the widest freedom of speech and thought – and Americans generally frown upon elected officials who try to set themselves as “culture ministers” who vet reading material.

By a 3-2 vote, the board gave initial approval to a policy that requires a full board vote before the district pilots a new book. The ringleader, Trustee Todd Frazier, argues it’s not actually a book ban. He’s technically correct. Yes, someone has to make these choices. But schools typically set up a process, such as the district’s Literature Review Committee, to vet teachers’ proposals.

Related Articles

This approach turns every mundane choice into a hot-button political issue. It will dumb down students’ reading material by assuring that educators propose only the least-controversial books – lest it set off controversy at a board meeting. The policy encourages ideologically driven board members to grandstand. Trustees have more pressing issues (e.g., finances, hiring practices, etc.) to handle.

“I have been made keenly aware that our education system has become more focused on divisive ideologies that threaten traditional American values rather than promote academic excellence,” Frazier argued during his campaign. Instead of focusing on academic excellence, the board majority seems intent on promoting its own divisive ideologies.

We have long supported the idea that parents should have a greater say in their children’s education, which is why we advocate for charter schools and other alternatives to monopoly public schools. But the answer isn’t to micromanage book choices or preen for conservative media, but to delve into the hard work of building a competitive school system.

​ Orange County Register 

The unexpected consequences of tobacco bans: bonds, taxes, police, and more

• April 26, 2023

If California’s legislature intends to create a smoke-free generation, they’ll need to adopt a new approach.

In pursuit of this noble goal, the California legislature is currently pondering Assembly Bill 935, a bill that would prohibit any individual born after 2006 from purchasing tobacco products. From the outset, the logic of the bill doesn’t track. Prohibitions on substances have proven time and again to be futile. Far from reducing the behavior they’re aimed at curbing, they simply push consumers to make riskier choices to get what they ultimately want — and this ban would be no different. But there are even more subterranean downsides to these bans. If California moves ahead with this legislation, the entire state budget will be at risk.

If the state government is truly committed to deterring smoking, they should focus on proven harm reduction policies instead of ineffective and counterproductive bans.

Proponents of tobacco prohibitions have argued that forbidding individuals from purchasing and consuming tobacco products would reduce federal and state health care costs as the incidence of tobacco-related illnesses, like cardiovascular disease and cancer, would decrease with smoking rates. It has been estimated that yearly tobacco-related health care costs in the Golden State total more than $15 billion, with almost $4 billion of those expenses sourced from Medicaid. If a ban were successfully implemented and followed religiously, it could help mitigate these expenditures and might save taxpayers big money — or so the argument goes.

In reality, however, the ban won’t work. People will keep smoking, they’ll just buy unregulated, untaxed cigarettes from a black market that’s sure to spring up, or they’ll drive to neighboring states to buy their smokes legally. Sure, the ban might deter some and cause smoking related illnesses to dip, but it seems unlikely medical costs will decrease enough to offset the billions of dollars in tobacco excise taxes the state would be missing out on every year. Today, California’s excise tax rate on cigarettes is $2.87, the 16th highest in the nation and almost a dollar above the average U.S. tax rate of $1.91. If the state were to eventually prohibit tobacco products entirely, like this bill intends, California would be out an estimated $2 billion in tax revenue a year. Revenue from these taxes goes towards the tobacco tax fund which finances the Tobacco-Use Prevention Education Program and the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, among other state programs focused on harm reduction.

Not only would California lose out on this revenue, but citizens would also be incentivized to road trip for their smokes. We know from recent studies that consumers are more than willing to make these treks in order to legally purchase these substances, in turn increasing their risk of car-related injuries which could then contribute to health care costs.

The financial implications of the ban go even deeper than tax revenue. If this bill were to be passed, California puts itself at risk of defaulting on their tobacco bonds, like New Jersey nearly did back in 2014. If the state defaults on these bonds (one of which doesn’t reach its final maturity until 2066) due to decreasing tobacco revenue from the phase-out ban of the substance, investors will still be entitled to collect the money they are due. A default like this has the potential to negatively affect the state budget (and, possibly, taxpayers) through added debts.

Related Articles

Even more worrisome, however, is the bill’s potential criminal justice implications. New York, for example, has a $4.35 excise tax rate on cigarettes which has resulted in individuals buying the products from neighboring states with lower tax rates and selling them on the street. In 2014, Eric Garner was killed by a New York City police officer while he was being arrested for illegally selling single cigarettes from packs without a tax stamp. While the proposed legislation does not detail the repercussions individuals could face if they were to be caught smuggling tobacco products into the state, California is inviting similar criminal justice issues by promoting total bans like those outlined in AB 935.

Harm reduction policies like the educational services and rehabilitation programs already available in California (and which are at risk of getting defunded if this bill passes) would mitigate these risks while helping to reduce the incidence of smoking in all generations. It would be incredibly unwise for the state of California to systematically diminish the tax revenue that funds their tobacco harm reduction programs. It is not the role of the government to forbid its citizens from choosing to smoke cigarettes — instead, they should focus on promoting healthier alternatives and educating the population on the long term health effects these products have on smokers and those surrounding them.

Sofia Hamilton is a Research Associate at a DC think tank and a Contributor with Young Voices where she focuses on issues related to health care, housing, and welfare. Her work has previously appeared in the Orange County Register, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and Real Clear Markets.

​ Orange County Register 

NFL draft: Which USC players might get picked and when

• April 26, 2023

With the NFL draft beginning Thursday, here’s a look at where USC prospects can expect to be selected over the weekend.

Jordan Addison

Position: Wide receiver

Year: Junior

Size: 5-foot-11, 173 pounds

Projections: Coming straight out of the season, Addison seemed like a lock not only to be a first-round pick but possibly as high as in the top 12. But as draft season progressed, there seemed to be less consensus on the valuation of receivers in this year’s draft, after a run on wideouts in Round 1 a year ago. Still, given his versatility and raw athleticism at his size, here’s guessing someone in the first round takes a gamble on Addison on Thursday night.

Mekhi Blackmon

Position: Cornerback

Year: Senior

Size: 5-foot-11, 178 pounds

Projections: Blackmon has done a lot of good work to improve his standing in the past year, from his breakout season at USC to running a 4.47-second 40-yard dash at the combine. But given how he’s used his physicality to make up for other athletic shortcomings, Blackmon is still likely a Day 3 guy, in Rounds 5-6.

Travis Dye

Position: Running back

Year: Senior

Size: 5-foot-10, 201 pounds

Projections: Dye is a tricky one to nail down, given the ankle fracture he suffered in November. He was still recovering from surgery at the NFL combine and did not get to run a 40-yard dash there, and the rainy conditions slowed down his time at USC’s pro day. This put a lot of weight on Dye’s private workouts with teams to show that he has regained his burst since the injury. Dye is likely a Day 3 selection, probably Rounds 6-7.

Brett Neilon

Position: Center

Year: Senior

Size: 6-foot-2, 295 pounds

Projections: Neilon entered the draft coming off a devastating leg injury suffered in early December. Unable to participate at the combine and pro day, Neilon will rely on game tape to get him a chance in the pros. He’s looking at either a Round 7 selection or undrafted free agency.

Tuli Tuipulotu

Position: Defensive end

Year: Junior

Size: 6-foot-3, 266 pounds

Projections: It’s tough to know exactly how an NFL team will use Tuipulotu, given his size doesn’t exactly match up with most NFL defensive linemen. But there’s enough film showing how much Tuipulotu’s strength and athleticism make up for any size limitations, and someone will take him in Round 2 or 3.

Related Articles

Andrew Vorhees

Position: Offensive line

Year: Senior

Size: 6-foot-6, 310 pounds

Projections: Vorhees was looking like a late first-round, early second-round selection prior to tearing his ACL at the NFL combine. Still, his incredible bench press performance after the injury stole headlines, and there will be a team without an immediate need on the offensive line willing to stash Vorhees for a year and allow him to recover from surgery. But it’s more likely to come in Rounds 4-5 than 2-3 now.

​ Orange County Register