Michael Cohen learned that membership in Trump’s inner circle has a harsh cost

When, in the early days, Donald Trump’s diehard fans failed to show up in front of 100 Centre Street at the Manhattan courthouse to clamor about the rank injustice of the case of The People of the State of New York v Donald J Trump,the lonely defendant roused himself from his fitful slumbers to choreograph a dance of the marionettes. The political delegations that started appearing on 14 May attired for perfectly flattering cosplay in Trump matching red ties was a refrain of surrogates echoing insults and imprecations that if the former president were to mutter himself would earn him further contempt of court citations.

Trump assembled around him a miniature court and hierarchy that populated a desolation row. In the front row were seated Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump, now installed as the co-chair of the Republican National Committee. There were the senators and congressmen, the failed presidential candidates and hopeful running mates who repeated Trump’s scripted talking points against the judge, the prosecutors and the justice system. There were the Fox News anchors, Jeanine Pirro, who exchanged smiles and nods with Trump, and Laura Ingraham, reprimanded by court officers for staring through forbidden binoculars as though she were on safari. There was former Trump White House adviser Boris Epshteyn, indicted in the Arizona fake electors scheme.

The carnival of the Trump vassals was a pop-up court society that formed below the authoritarian ruler. Their ranked serfdom revealed the status pyramid. Like the witnesses, whoever they have been, the trial has dramatized the web of the only kind of relationship Trump knows: master and servant.

Day after day, Trump’s underworld has been peeled away. His main line of defense