For two years, the investigation of Donald Trump has ranged through far-flung locales—Kiev, Moscow, London—and been led by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is hunkered down inside an office in southwest Washington. Suddenly, though, the greatest legal threats to the president are coming from his hometown, in a turn that’s as much karmic as it is geographic. New York is beginning to exact its revenge on Trump.

When Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony counts last week, and implicated his former client in payoffs to a porn actress and a former Playmate, he did it in a lower Manhattan courtroom. Around the corner, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, are the offices of the Southern District of New York, the prosecutors who assembled the case against Cohen and who granted immunity to Trump’s erstwhile friend David Pecker, the tabloid publisher, and to Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer. A dozen blocks south is the office of the New York state attorney general, Barbara Underwood, who recently filed a civil lawsuit alleging Trump’s foundation misused charitable contributions; Underwood is also pushing to close New York’s double-jeopardy loophole, so that anyone pardoned for federal crimes can still be prosecuted by the state. And all over the place is Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has been feuding with Trump while one of his state agencies investigates the president’s tax filings.

Trump—despite the tacky gold-veneer buildings, despite eating pizza with a knife and fork—is of course a New Yorker, born in Queens and an official city resident for 70 years, until he moved into the White House. His businesses are centered here, too. So it made logistical and jurisdictional sense for Mueller, when he became aware of possible pre-election hush-money payments by Cohen on behalf of Trump, to refer the case to the Southern District. The S.D.N.Y. is also particularly well-equipped to handle complex, politically charged investigations. “The Trump and Cohen cases are really a combination of a financial investigation, a public corruption investigation, and an organized-crime investigation,” says Mimi Rocah, who was a prosecutor in the Southern District for 16 years, rising to become the chief of its organized-crime unit. “And historically those are three of the office’s strongest areas.”

In legal circles the Southern District is sometimes mocked as the “Sovereign” District, for its elevated opinion of its abilities and its willingness to keep its bosses at the Department of Justice at arm’s length. “The Southern District’s traditional independence, its unwillingness to be bullied or pushed around by Main Justice, is probably particularly useful from Mueller’s vantage point,” a former senior S.D.N.Y. prosecutor says. “The office is practiced at tuning out media and political pressures. They’re not going to be guided by what people in Main might say about a case. They are going to use their own judgment.”

The feds should continue to have first crack at any alleged crimes related to the 2016 presidential election. But the traffic in pursuit of Trump is growing thicker. After Cohen’s guilty plea, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance let it be known that he is considering pursuing charges against the Trump Organization. In June, New York’s state attorney general, Underwood, filed a civil suit alleging that the Trump Foundation violated state and federal charity laws and that Trump used donations for personal benefit. Underwood’s office recently fought off an attempt by Trump’s lawyers to delay hearings in that case from October until after the midterms. But she may have more to worry about from local politics.