Bret Baier. Jeanine Pirro. Tom Brady. And Michael D. Cohen.
Those were among the dozens of names — celebrities, politicians, media personalities, relatives and more — that emerged at Donald J. Trump’s trial, when prosecutors displayed a list of the former president’s “close contacts” prepared by his former gatekeeper.
Included on the list were people whom Mr. Trump spoke to often or might have wanted to speak to around the time he took office following the 2016 election, a former White House staffer testified.
The list offered a clear look at the kind of celebrity-filled orbit Mr. Trump was interested in maintaining, one comprising people Mr. Trump had in many cases known for decades, some of whom looked at him differently after the election.
It was not clear how often any of the particular contacts were in touch with Mr. Trump, whose longtime assistant prepared the partial list and sent it to the White House gatekeeper, Madeleine Westerhout, after he became president in 2017.
But in questioning Ms. Westerhout last week, prosecutors focused on two names on the list, both of them people who have testified that they were instrumental in helping to orchestrate the hush-money payment that is at the center of the trial: David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer; and Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer and the prosecution’s star witness.