This week in the saga

The week of the old servants. In the Manhattan courtroom the man who once paid the hush money sits down across from him and recites the ledger back — and under cross-examination admits he has lied before, which the defense takes for the whole case. Word leaks that the chief of staff of the final White House days has traded testimony for immunity; the tower answers that there was nothing to tell. In Washington the Speaker's chair finally fills with a loyalist — MAGA Mike — and from Vol. 1's ruins an old rival returns to kneel: the sleeping monk, first of the sixteen to bend the knee, now first of them to endorse the return. Then Sunday night an appeals court snaps the muzzle back on, and the week ends with the defendant walking a dark corridor toward the one thing left: the stand.