This week in the saga

The ledger trial turns domestic. All week he prosecutes the judge's own household — the wife whose posts he brandishes, the clerk at the bench — and when the account he has been quoting vanishes overnight, he declares the deletion itself the proof and demands a mistrial that will never come. Then west: two Iowa cities in one Saturday, and at midnight, somewhere over the snowfields, the crowd's roar settles into a cold certainty — one year from now, a political earthquake. An actor curses him from an awards stage and gets a full column of contempt by morning, because no enemy is too small for the chronicle. The week ends in Washington, where a judge rules there is no absolute immunity for former presidents, and the chapter's other long thread — can he be tried at all? — pulls taut.