Michael Cohen once believed that he would lead Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. When that didn’t come to pass, he told friends he might become White House chief of staff. That didn’t happen either, but still he told a reporter he’d “take a bullet for the president.”

Instead, Trump’s longtime lawyer stood in a federal courtroom in Manhattan on a sunny Tuesday afternoon and, in the parlance of the president, ratted him out.

Wearing a dark suit and a gold tie, Cohen said under oath that he was immune from any outside influences, including drugs and alcohol. He’d had a glass of 12-year Glenlivet Scotch on the rocks the night before, he told the judge, but that was an extenuating circumstance given what he was about to do.