The day after Michael Avenatti was arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of domestic violence, the media world was still digesting the news with a mixture of shock, skepticism, and Schadenfreude. The sudden fall of the pugnacious, hard-charging attorney seemed a fitting bookend to a similarly baffling ascent to the heights of greenroom stardom following his canny representation of Stormy Daniels, a client relationship he recently parlayed into an unlikely political career. Republicans responded with evident glee, goading Democrats on Twitter over the supposed downfall of a liberal lion. Democrats, for the most part, seemed in no rush to defend Avenatti, beyond urging caution regarding an incident with precious few details. Members of the media, too, appeared to have already rendered their judgment on Avenatti’s presidential ambitions. “Basta,” tweeted Daily Beast editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman, turning Avenatti’s signature hashtag—Italian for “enough”—into an epitaph.

The contours of the story do indeed look bad for Avenatti. TMZ reported that the face of the alleged victim was “swollen and bruised” with “red marks” on both cheeks; according to the outlet, Avenatti yelled “she hit me first” when he was arrested Wednesday. In a press release, the Los Angeles Police Department said that the case would be “presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney for prosecution.” At the same time, there was some confusion over who, if anyone, had been abused. The initial TMZ report identified the victim as Avenatti’s “estranged wife,” but later corrected the story, after his second wife said the story was false, to say it was a “different woman.” Avenatti, who has denied any wrongdoing, posted $50,000 bail and left police custody Wednesday evening. On Thursday, he promised not only to prove his innocence, but to continue testing the waters for his presidential run. “The measure of a person is how they get up when they are knocked down,” he texted a reporter at USA Today.

Whatever happened, the Avenatti affair already offers a chilling preview of 2020 battles to come. Conservative commentators, naturally, accused CNN and MSNBC, where Avenatti has been a frequent guest, of glossing over the story. Those obsessed with liberal hypocrisy when it comes to things like domestic abuse and sexual assault, were quick to place Avenatti in the pantheon of lefty miscreants. “Well, from Weinstein to Sharpton to Farrakhan and, now, to Avenatti, the Democrats have a pattern, don’t they, of aligning themselves with seedy figures—even if it means betraying the Democrats’ espoused values that would have actually advanced their cause,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on her show Thursday night. The episode also served as a vivid illustration of how, in the Machiavellian arena of national politics, a candidate’s self-professed strengths can just as easily be turned against them. “If the short-tempered angry guy who kept talking about how tough he was and how he was a fighter . . . ended up having a violent temper,” wrote Jim Geraghty for the National Review, “it wouldn’t be the most shocking twist in the world.”

For social-media obsessives, Avenatti’s arrest could be seen as a case study in how news events are now processed through the frenzied Twitter hive mind. It’s a testament to the right-wing conspiracy mill that news of Avenatti’s arrest grew its own legs in the MAGA-sphere, attracting the attention of Trump super-fan Jacob Wohl, who weeks ago was implicated in a failed scam to take down Robert Mueller. Shortly after the news broke, Surefire Intelligence, a firm Wohl has admitted to operating, tweeted the cryptic message: “Surefire Intelligence strikes again.” The tweet’s meaning wasn’t immediately clear—via his personal account, Wohl said Avenatti should be considered “innocent until proven guilty”—but Avenatti, at least, seemed to take the boast seriously:

The interplay quickly turned into a bizarre sideshow. Wohl later denied Surefire had been involved in the arrest, asking rhetorically during an interview with the Gateway Pundit, “Did I mind-control him and force him to beat up this woman?” He told me the tweet was sent in jest by an “associate” as a means to troll Avenatti, who he said had blocked his Twitter account—“I congratulated [the associate],” Wohl said. “I thought it was a good tweet.” He also said he had filed a police report in response to Avenatti’s perceived threat, and added that Avenatti told reporters he believed Wohl sent a “plant” to somehow goad him into implicating himself, a claim that Wohl dismissed. “If I was going to accuse somebody of attempting to frame me,” he said, “man, I would want to have some evidence.” (Avenatti has not responded to a request for comment.)