CNN reported that Cohen the Fixer claims Trump knew about the Russian meeting during the campaign with his son and Paul Manafort. The president hit the mattresses on Twitter, denying it all.

This could be the ballgame, says David Corn of Mother Jones, who wrote: “This ex-consigliere poses a triple threat to the godfather he once ruthlessly served.”

Given that this is Trump, however, it’s possible that there could be a twist. Rhona Graff, the Don’s capo at Trump Tower, could come sit in the back of the courtroom and stare at Cohen until the wannabe wise guy suddenly recants, “Godfather”-style: “Look, the F.B.I. guys promised me a deal. So I made up a lot of stuff about Donald Trump cause that’s what they wanted. But it was all lies.”

Rudy Giuliani has somersaulted from a RICO-happy prosecutor to a man acting like a Mafia lawyer, telling Chris Cuomo that Cohen is an “incredible liar” when only three months ago he pronounced him “an honest, honorable lawyer.”

If the White House seems more and more like “Goodfellas,” it is not an accident.

“Trump has a very cinematic sense of himself,” O’Brien said. Like many on social media, he is driven to be the star of his own movie. He even considered going to film school in L.A. before he settled into his father’s business.

O’Brien recalled that Trump told him that he thought Clint Eastwood was the greatest movie star. “He and Melania model their squints on Eastwood,” the biographer noted. Trump also remarked, while they were watching “Sunset Boulevard” on the Trump plane, that a particular scene was amazing: the one where Norma Desmond obsessively watches her silent films and cries: “Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I’ll show them!”