Republicans used that testimony to suggest that Giuliani had gone rogue in his service to the president.

“I have some questions about what Mr. Giuliani was doing,” Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) told reporters outside the hearing. If Giuliani was “off on his own mission doing things that people didn’t know about, kind of like a loose cannon, then that’s a Rudy Giuliani thing, that’s not a President Trump thing.”

Or, as an anonymous House member told Axios: “If it’s a step removed from the president, he doesn’t lose any Republicans in the House.” That step, according to another Republican, is Rudy: “Rudy will be cut loose because he was rogue.”

If all of this sounds familiar, it is because the story mirrors what happened with Michael Cohen, Trump’s previous personal attorney. Before Trump entered the Oval Office, Cohen spent years as his “fixer,” making vulgar legal threats and otherwise finding ways to make bad news go away. When Stormy Daniels loomed as a threat to Trump’s campaign, it was Cohen who wrote the check to ensure her silence.