There was no shortage of global geopolitical matters weighing on President Donald Trump this week. His administration has taken custody of thousands of migrant children after separating them from their families at the border; photos revealed that Trump’s newfound friend Kim Jong Un was perhaps not being so honest when he vowed to halt North Korea’s nuclear program; and U.S. allies are terrified that the president’s upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin will be yet another diplomatic disaster.

But perhaps the biggest threat to Donald Trump has been playing out much closer to home. On Wednesday morning, Michael Cohen, Steve Bannon, Sam Nunberg, and Tom Arnold were all milling about the Regency Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. To be sure, they were not all there together. Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer, has been living at the hotel for months. (It was there, rather famously, where F.B.I. agents executed a search warrant in early April as part of a criminal investigation out of the Southern District of New York.) Bannon, Trump’s firebrand former chief strategist, frequently stays at the hotel when he comes to New York, and Nunberg, the former Trump aide who’s become something of a fixture on cable news, was there to visit him. Arnold, who made the cable rounds himself last week after posting a selfie with Cohen in the Regency lobby, was in town filming episodes for his upcoming Viceland show, for which the comedian searches for damaging tapes that could bring the president down.

The convocation of Trump foes and foils, under one roof, would be an ominous portent under any circumstance. More recently, however, it is Cohen who has come to represent the most existential threat to the president. Ever since April, when the F.B.I. came calling, Trump’s friends and advisers have fretted over whether Cohen—who has an intimate knowledge of the Trump Organization’s foreign dealings—will ultimately cooperate with federal prosecutors if charges are brought against him. Lawyers for Trump and for the Trump Organization have joined Cohen in contesting which of Cohen’s documents (including a number of audio files) may be protected by attorney-client privilege, and have been given until next week to finish their review. So far, however, it seems Cohen will be an open book: the special master in charge of mediating the issue has determined that only 161 of nearly 4 million items are privileged, meaning the government will be able to have access to almost everything taken in the F.B.I. raid.

For the president, Cohen’s moves in recent days have been even more foreboding. Last week, I reported that Cohen will switch from his current attorneys, who have handled the document review, to a new lawyer, Guy Petrillo, who served as the head of the criminal division of the S.D.N.Y.—a signal that Cohen may be preparing to resolve his situation without going to trial. Days later, Cohen resigned from his leadership position at the Republican National Committee in a letter taking a lash at Trump’s immigration policies. Shortly thereafter, Cohen retweeted a photo taken by Arnold with the two smiling next to one another in the Regency lobby—a photo that Arnold told me he hoped would send a shock wave through the Oval Office.

Those gestures mark a shift in attitude for Cohen, who told me last August he would take a bullet for the president. They also correspond to a shift Cohen has experienced in the way strangers are talking about him, as he enters this next phase in the criminal investigation. “For months, every article written about Michael was calling him a thug, a moron, someone who was all mobbed up,” one friend of Cohen's told me. “Those words are mentioned millions and millions of times. He had tabloid guys heckling him at dinner with his family telling him he was going to jail, paparazzi yelling at him as he goes in and out of his hotel.” Earlier this week, however, a woman chased him down the street, shouting at him that he could be a hero if he cooperates with the government and brings President Trump down. Last week, another person attempted to get a message to Cohen, saying, “Please let him know that he could go down in history as the man that saved this country. I think his family would be so proud of him. Even people like me that were disgusted with the things we heard on those audio recordings, would totally forgive him.”

Cohen’s friends have been whispering encouragements, too, particularly after the president distanced himself from Cohen earlier this month by telling reporters that he “liked” Cohen, in the past tense. “He’s frustrated,” one person close to Cohen told me. “Washington is actively pushing him away as opposed to protecting him or welcoming him back in, when, at the same time, he has all these people telling him that he could change the course of the midterms, or 2020.”

Cohen has not yet met with federal prosecutors, according to three people familiar with the situation, and he has remained mostly quiet while the rest of the world speculates about what he has on the president, and whether or not he plans to use it. What is clear is that Cohen, after a year of scrutiny and mounting legal bills, is not the same man who once offered to be a human shield for the Trumps. “I have no one watching my back,” he has told friends. “I just did what I was told.”