No matter how long or how intimately you've known Donald Trump, you're one news cycle away from being tossed overboard. As Esquire's Charles P. Pierce put it this week, the loopholes Trump spends his life squeezing through aren't big enough to bring anyone with him. An old friend becomes a needy acquaintance; a campaign chairman becomes someone you got from the temp agency; a national security adviser becomes a "volunteer." Anything to keep The Boss' head above water—and the water is rising.



When the FBI raided Michael Cohen's home, offices, and hotel room last week, seizing computers and documents, it was widely perceived as a turning point in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Donald Trump and his associates. Cohen was Trump's longtime fixer, and is intimately acquainted with whatever President Business Deals was up to abroad before he reached the White House. It also emerged that Cohen has been under investigation for months, and the feds may have been wiretapping him and reading his email during that period.



Trump reacted with volcanic anger. Friends and associates of both men sounded the alarm, with many suggesting Cohen may flip on Trump.

Cohen is usually described as Trump's personal lawyer, or his fixer, or his "consigliere" of sorts. For some time, Trump has referred to Cohen as "my lawyer." But all that came to an end this week—at least if the words of White House aides are anything to go on.



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WH continues remarkable effort of trying to distance Trump from Cohen. Hogan Gidley on @ac360 says Cohen is one of “many” Trump lawyers. Earlier today, Sanders: “I believe they've still got some ongoing things, but the President has a large number of attorneys, as you know.” — Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 17, 2018

Now Cohen is just some guy, one of "many" lawyers? Wasn't he the avvocato di tutti avvocati just last week? It's almost like the White House is trying to pretend a close associate of Trump is a nobody that he's never met just as soon as he gets in trouble. And it's not the first time.

Paul Manafort

Paul Manaforte at the Republican National Convention with then candidate Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump. Getty Images

Perhaps the most audacious example was the White House's recasting of Paul Manafort when the Russia investigation started ramping up in the public eye in March of last year. Manafort was forced to resign after a ledger emerged in Ukraine detailing shady payments from Kremlin-linked politicos there. (His deputy, Rick Gates, stayed on with the campaign.) Before his resignation, Manafort was chairman of the Trump campaign, which sounds important, possibly because it means he was running the entire thing. He held this job throughout the summer of 2016—a crucial period that included the Republican Convention.

Yet when asked about it at a press conference, then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer described him as someone "who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time."



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Spicer was never the savviest of this White House's truthless public advocates, which is how he earned a perfect headline from ABC News:



Spicer: Former campaign chairman had 'very limited role'

Michael Flynn

Donald Trump and Michael Flynn at a campaign rally in October 2016. Getty Images

In that same presser, Spicer characterized Michael Flynn as a "volunteer" for the campaign, as if he was knocking on doors in Wisconsin. Flynn was a campaign adviser from February 2016 on, and was reportedly considered as Trump's running mate. He spoke at the Republican National Convention, where he led chants of, "Lock her up!" He went on to be the president's national security adviser before he was forced to resign in record time. Since then, he has pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials and is cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.

George Papadopoulos

Around the time that Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were indicted, another name came up: George Papadopoulos. The campaign foreign policy adviser pled guilty to lying to the FBI the same day Manafort and Gates' indictments came through, but the White House pretended Papadopoulos was nobody:

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"Again, this was a campaign volunteer... He was somebody that played a minimal role, if one at all." - @PressSec, on Papadopoulos pic.twitter.com/3iKZOFoMok — BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 31, 2017

Soon after, former Trump adviser Michael Caputo told CNN that Papadopoulos was a "coffee boy."

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Of course, a photo soon emerged—originally tweeted by Trump himself during the campaign—of Papadopoulos sitting in a meeting with Trump and Jeff Sessions, his chief foreign policy adviser during the campaign:

Twitter

When it emerged that Papadopoulos discussed setting up a line of communication with Kremlin-linked officials at that meeting, it also raised questions about Sessions' sworn testimony that he never heard of anyone in the campaign trying to make contact with the Russians. It appears Trump may have lied about this as well. We also soon learned that Papadopoulos did, in fact, set out to connect the campaign with Russia, and was frequently in touch with senior-level campaign officials about doing so.

Roger Stone

Getty Images

And then, of course, there's Roger Stone. Trump's longtime confidante and political adviser has felt the pull of the Russia probe quagmire recently, particularly as his ties to Wikileaks have come under the microscope. When Stone's name first surfaced last March, however, Sean Spicer dismissed him as a "hanger-on" to the campaign who was sent "cease-and-desist" letters. Here's how Stone described their relationship in his most recent book:

At the time, Stone also clarified to The Weekly Standard that he was still in touch with Trump:

“I prefer to communicate with the president through short pithy memos as I have for 39 years. I don't bother the President with minutiae. Our conversations are private although the FBI was evidently listening to them.”

Considering Stone has been advising Trump on and off since the '80s, it seems he's the oldest acquaintance Trump's team has so far been willing to anonymize. Stone won't have taken it personally—as one of the great scoundrels of modern American politics, he'll accept a public play for what it is. The question is what happens if the investigation continues to creep into Trump's closest associates: his family. Both Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner, for instance, were at that infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Would there just be one less chair at Thanksgiving?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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