Rudy Giuliani, the ultimate Trump freelancer, repeatedly sidelined, now stepped forward again with a deus ex machina that resembled nothing so much as Nixon’s discovery of Alger Hiss’s Pumpkin Papers (notes and microfilm said to prove that Hiss was a spy stashed in a literal hollowed-out pumpkin in his backyard). In the final days of the election, Giuliani had located, in a computer fix-it shop in Delaware, a hard drive purported to belong to Hunter Biden which Giuliani claimed contained emails linking Joe Biden to the same alleged foreign corruption to which Giuliani and Trump had previously tried to link Hunter and, hence, his father, resulting in Trump’s 2019 impeachment.

If the Democrats seemed briefly stricken by what might be revealed by Hunter’s alleged hard drive, the confusion, oddness, and general harebrained quality of all Giuliani’s efforts and gambits reliably overshadowed any point he was trying to make.

Here, too, was another Trumpworld theme: the president’s need to be proven right. Hence his refusal to give up on bad hands that had been played before. Trump, temperamentally unable to let almost anything go—mental loops hardened in place, obsessional and fixated—was yet convinced that Hunter Biden was Joe Biden’s mortal weakness; Trump could hardly believe this prospective Hunter Biden scandal hadn’t played. Hunter Biden was Trump’s answer to the great Russia hoax. It was really the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens tied up in foreign corruption—not him! And he could prove it. Hunter Biden was the smoking gun.

But here was, he hotly felt, the media establishment circling the wagons, unwilling to see Democratic scandal where Democratic scandal so obviously was, with even social media blacking out Hunter Biden news. Come on! There on video was Hunter Biden blowing crack and getting a foot job! Giuliani had given the hard-drive scoop to the New York Post, which headlined it for days—but it was an October dud. Hardly any other pickup. If anything, it was seen as yet another sign of Trump desperation.

Eric Herschmann, another insider-outsider, now popped up to save the day. A former partner of one of Trump’s former lawyers, Marc Kasowitz—who himself had briefly been a White House presence before being routed by other White House factions—Herschmann had joined an energy company in Texas and cashed out with, depending on who was telling the tale, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or hundreds and hundreds of millions and a collection of high-end autos that often made much-commented-upon appearances in the West Wing parking lot. He was one of the billionaire types (or almost-billionaire types, or would-be-billionaire types) whom Kushner courted and trusted. Plus, he was willing to work for free. He had become an official come-as-he-wanted Trump whisperer.

Now he came with Tony Bobulinski.