The first option is that these people think Trump has done something wrong involving Russia. You can even go full peeliever! There’s a lot we still don’t know about Russian interference, whether Trump aides were involved, and what Trump himself knew when. (A member of Mueller’s team offered a federal judge this explanation on Thursday, defending the indictment of Manafort as properly falling within the scope of the inquiry: “He had long-standing ties to Russia-backed politicians,” he said, according to ABC News. “Did they provide back channels to Russia? Investigators will naturally look at those things.”)

This still seems like the lowest chance of provable criminal behavior, though. It has become banal to note that collusion is not a crime per se, and while there’s a great deal of questionable content, there’s not yet direct evidence of Trump committing a specific crime. (Caveat lector: None of us knows what Mueller knows.) Any prosecution of a sitting president on a novel legal theory would face enormous hurdles. More likely is that Trump might have committed obstruction of justice by interfering with an FBI probe of Flynn, and then firing Comey.

But while some of Trump’s allies have advised him to take a bellicose stance from the start, there have been plenty of others who advised cooperation on Russia matters. White House lawyer Ty Cobb, and to a reportedly lesser extent Dowd, until the very end of his run, favored cooperating with Mueller. The theory was this: Trump was innocent of any criminal wrongdoing on the Russia case, so he should speak with the special counsel promptly, cauterize the investigation, and then make the case for Mueller to wrap up quickly.

That desire to wrap it up quickly is a relevant bridge to the other two scenarios. The raid on Cohen’s office and homes particularly infuriated the president, even though his fixer hasn’t yet been charged with any crimes. Now that Trump’s business empire and personal dealings are suddenly in view of the courts—though not, so far, being reviewed by Mueller himself, but rather by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan—people like Goldberg and Dershowitz have begun making their unintentionally incriminating remarks. That suggests Trump’s allies view his business dealings as the most likely areas where the president might have committed a crime.

Scenario two is that Trump’s allies believe he did nothing wrong with regard to Russia but is susceptible to prosecution for his business career. Many people in business in New York bend the rules, and prosecutors mostly look the other way (the dearth of prosecutions following the financial crisis being the most prominent example), but if they want to get you they can. It’s the equivalent of pretextual stop for loitering, but for old, white, rich men. Certainly, Trump was willing to bend and even break the rules during his business career, and often ended up taking slaps on the wrist and paying fines when he was caught. That’s the cost of doing business. But—or so this theory goes—Trump didn’t realize that by running for president, and taking stands that would alienate powerful political players in New York and Washington, he was inviting them to pore over his record and go after him for his past conduct in business. In this view, prosecuting Trump is basically just a punitive measure, since even if he did anything wrong, so did his peers in the business.