‘‘There it is,’’ Lewandowski said, a little halfheartedly, pointing out the window. His day had not gotten off to a great start. That morning, Puerto Rico had filed for a territorial version of bankruptcy. A prominent watchdog group had sent a letter to the Justice Department asking officials there to investigate why Lewandowski had never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a World War II-era law that imposes stringent disclosure requirements on Americans representing foreign governments in Washington. (Though Bennett and other Avenue employees had registered as lobbyists, Lewandowski insisted that most of his business was advising clients on strategy, not setting up meetings or contacting officials on their behalf, the kind of work that requires you to register.) Politico had struck again, revealing Avenue’s Citgo contract. Technically, the United States-based company was owned by the left-wing government of Venezuela, whose vice president the Trump administration had accused of drug trafficking.

Lewandowski told me he didn’t work directly for foreign governments, notwithstanding the stories and documents. Not that he wouldn’t be good at it — you know, if he wanted to. ‘‘I don’t work for foreign governments, but if I were a foreign government, and I wanted to hire people who understood how to get to the president, there are a small number of people I would think of,’’ Lewan­dowski said. As he spoke, he seemed to recover his familiar brio. ‘‘The establishment is so afraid of President Trump they will do anything. Which includes hiring individuals who have purported to be tied to the White House who really aren’t.’’

The next day, Lewandowski announced he was quitting Avenue. In a lengthy interview with Bloomberg, he explained that Bennett and their employees had been using his name to drum up business he didn’t want, exposing him to criticism and sullying his reputation. He insisted he had never asked Trump for anything. ‘‘People want to see me fail,’’ Lewandowski grumbled.

‘‘I feel bad for Corey,’’ Bennett told me when I went to see him the following week. ‘‘He didn’t do anything wrong. But he’s a lightning rod.’’ Bob Dole, he pointed out, had just signed a $500,000 contract for work on behalf of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a violence-racked country run by a kleptocratic strongman. But no one in Washington gave Bob Dole a hard time.

‘‘He thought he could go in’’ — into the White House — ‘‘during the second wave,’’ Bennett said of Lewandowski. K Street was just a way station for him, Bennett suggested, while he waited for the only job he truly wanted — the one he could picture when he gazed out his window, down Pennsylvania Avenue. ‘‘Looking back on it, he probably should never have owned a chunk of a lobbying firm. In the media’s mind, every client we had was Corey’s client.’’ But even with Lewandowski gone, Bennett said, there was plenty of work. ‘‘All of K Street is doing well right now,’’ he said. ‘‘Chaos is good for everyone’s business.’’

Lewandowski, I soon learned, hadn’t really left the swamp. He had merely receded into the nebulous ranks of Washington’s unregistered lobbyists. In July, he founded a new firm, Lewandowski Strategic Advisors. He offered clients ‘‘strategic advice and counsel,’’ according to a copy of one contract I obtained, and had picked up at least one client from Avenue, the Ohio payday lender. He was back on TV more and more, energetically defending Trump and plumping for various private interests. At one point, I got a tip that he had been spotted in Taipei, Taiwan. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing there, or for whom he was working — ‘‘I’m just a private citizen,’’ he texted — but weeks later, he tweeted about the Trump administration’s decision to approve a $1.42 billion arms sale to the country. He hadn’t yet landed that White House job, but he was in the West Wing often, and he had a new Twitter avatar: a picture of himself standing on the stairs to Air Force One. Newt Gingrich’s publisher had bought Lewandowski’s Trump book, and by the end of the summer, he had added yet another gig, joining Trump’s official super PAC, American First Action. Lewandowski had absorbed the swamp’s most essential trait: adaptability.

Not long ago, Stryk opened a proper Washington office, right in Georgetown, a stone’s throw from the Four Seasons. The new space was undecorated and unmarked, and there wasn’t much there yet but a couple of laptops. But Stryk was buoyant. He was about to sign two more big foreign lobbying clients, the governments of Afghanistan and Kenya, along with a pharmaceutical firm. Saudi Arabia had canceled its S.P.G. contract after Stryk’s client, the crown prince, was deposed in a palace reshuffle, and New Zealand’s foreign ministry had decided that its embassy no longer needed Stryk’s services. But in Stryk’s view, these were just hiccups. Competitors around town — big firms that had never given him the time of day — were starting to ask around about S.P.G., wondering who they were and how they were getting so much business.