Herschmann, too, was attached to his cars, parking his Lamborghini incongruously next to the government cars in the White House parking lot. But after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and before the second impeachment, Herschmann had gotten himself out of Dodge. In fact, every single lawyer who had worked on Trump’s first impeachment was conveniently unavailable. Still, like Trump’s old lawyer Michael Cohen, who had remained with the president through all the offenses he, Cohen, had ever since been recanting, you did not relinquish Donald Trump so easily. Perhaps because he was always carping at you on the phone, or just because the drama, the runaway-train drama, called you back. How could you not stay to see the end: the most incredible train wreck ever?

And indeed, Schoen and Castor were now furious at Herschmann, who, even while taking cover, was still trying to hold on to his Trumpworld place and run everything. Or, really, more to the point, nobody was running anything; Herschmann was just running it more than they were because he was more often on the phone with the ex-president—who was furious, steaming, nonstop in his hectoring, ever certain in his certainties, as it was always thus.

Trump was ranting to his legal team that he didn’t want this trial going down this way—technicalities, free speech, jurisdiction baloney. He wanted his defense to be that the election was stolen from him. It was stolen! Everybody knew it was stolen. Here was the chance to lay out the case! Indeed, the former president proposed he make the case himself on the Senate floor!

But here was the one argument Herschmann and virtually everybody else associated with the case had no doubt would get the former president convicted. Once more, everybody was trying to save Trump from himself, never a promising proposition.

There were more immediate problems. The unwieldy group, nobody necessarily speaking to anyone else, was stuck outside the hotel in the freezing weather. The Trump guys, the remaining retinue or remnants of Trumpworld, were trying to move everybody forward as a group—and get there ASAP to fix the typos. But after January 6, the Capitol had become a veritable DMZ. There were new roadblocks and checkpoints to navigate everywhere. It was thirty degrees Fahrenheit, bone-cold, and they’d been standing outside (except for Castor, in the G Wagon with the heat running) for twenty minutes. And nobody seemed to know why, except that somebody had said they needed to wait; Adam wasn’t here.

Who, somebody finally asked, is Adam?

Adam was the legal intern who was going to drive the Jeep.

And why isn’t Adam here?

“He’s doing a law school quiz on Zoom.”

A Trump wag noted: “We’ve gone through all the lawyers and are now down to law students.”

The Trump guys finally piled everyone into two cars, leaving the Jeep and Adam behind.