Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, told a federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday that he broke the law at Trump’s behest during the 2016 campaign, paying off two women with whom the president had extramarital affairs so that they wouldn’t damage his electoral prospects. And it only got worse for Trump from there.

Cohen’s admission, which came as part of a plea agreement struck with federal prosecutors, places the president within arm’s reach of criminal activity during the election. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges, including five counts of tax evasion, one count of making a false statement to a bank, and two counts related to violating campaign-finance laws. He was released on $500,000 bail and will be sentenced at a later date.

In a coincidence that would have been too blunt for Hollywood screenwriters, Cohen’s guilty plea came within minutes of a Virginia jury’s verdict in the trial of Paul Manafort. The jurors found the former Trump campaign chairman guilty on eight of the eighteen charges against him: five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failing to register a foreign account. While the jury failed to reach a verdict on the other ten charges, Manafort’s conviction marks a significant victory for Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation.

Tuesday’s news cycle only underscored the legal peril faced by members of Trump’s inner circle. Rick Gates, his former deputy campaign chairman, testified against Manafort at that trial as part of a plea deal he struck with Mueller’s office this spring. George Papadopoulos, Trump’s former foreign-policy aide, is facing six months in prison after the special counsel told a federal judge last week that he hindered the Russia investigation. And Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, filed a joint report with Mueller’s office on Tuesday afternoon to delay sentencing for lying to the FBI because his cooperation was still ongoing.

The whirlwind of legal proceedings is now closer to the president than ever before. The risk now is that he delivers a proportionate counterattack. For more than a year, Trump has sought to undermine the investigations into himself and his allies at every turn. He has repeatedly condemned the inquiries as a partisan “witch hunt.” He has accused prosecutors of trying to overturn the 2016 election. He has conducted a slow-rolling purge of the FBI’s upper ranks, and threatened to fire both Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.