Rudy Giuliani sent an unmistakable message Wednesday night: It’s everyone for themselves.

During a CNN interview, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer blurted out that the only person he knows about who didn’t collude with Russia was Trump himself. Although Giuliani tried to walk back his comments on Thursday, the remarks put the sprawling web of people caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on notice: no one is coming to save you.

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“Ya think!!!” one former Trump campaign official wrote to POLITICO when asked if Giuliani was trying to protect the president at the expense of everyone who worked for him.

The Team Trump infighting has been a prosecutor’s dream for Mueller, opening up an ever-widening window into the behind-the-scenes workings of a rookie politician whose campaign has been under investigation for years. The special counsel and federal prosecutors have already benefited from the internal sniping, flipping Trump’s former lawyer, national security adviser and campaign chairman.

Bickering and backstabbing were Trump world trade marks long before the former businessman launched his White House bid, from the real estate mogul’s decades of private business dealings to his years as a reality television star.

But the attitude has taken on a completely new life as Mueller’s 20-month-old probe creeps increasingly closer to the president. Now the sniping can have long-term legal consequences, and the president and his former aides have used press interviews, social media posts and court filings to take shots at each other in the interest of protecting themselves and their reputations.

“Nobody is really on the same team anymore when you’ve worked with Donald Trump,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump 2016 campaign aide who has been questioned multiple times by Mueller and congressional investigators.

“Trump puts everyone against each other when you work for him,” he added. “While he demands loyalty, he doesn’t return it. Loyalty is not a two-way street, especially when you’ve got special counsel involved in it.”

Michael Zeldin, a former Mueller DOJ aide, likened the current divisions inside Trump world to the mafia.

“Even Whitey Bulger gets beaten to death for having squealed. That always made it hard for prosecutors because it was very hard to break someone out of the organization,” Zeldin said, referencing the famous Boston mobster. “Here, everyone is saying, ‘I can cooperate.’ Whether they are fully truthful, they all seem to be available.”

The latest example is Michael Cohen, the former Trump personal lawyer who appears to be sparing few in his bid to shorten his prison sentence and resurrect his image after being swept up in multiple investigations.

Cohen turned publicly against Trump last summer and even urged voters headed into the 2018 midterms to elect Democrats so that Congress could rein in his former boss’s presidency. Next month, Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee in a high-profile hearing expected to draw gavel-to-gavel media coverage.

He’s already spent months blaming the president for any suspect behavior during the campaign, saying his “weakness” was a “blind loyalty” to Trump. Hush payments that Cohen made to women alleging affairs with Trump? Made at Trump’s direction, Cohen said. Paying people a bag of cash to rig online polls in Trump’s favor? Done because Trump made the request — and it was a check, not a bag — Cohen claimed.

In the courtroom, Cohen’s legal team has also indirectly swiped at others in Trump’s orbit. Last month, Cohen attorney Guy Petrillo argued in court that his client’s cooperation with prosecutors “should substantially mitigate his sentence, and his action stands in profound contrast to the decision of some others not to cooperate and allegedly to double deal while pretending to cooperate.”

While Petrillo didn’t mention former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort by name, the reference was almost unmistakable. A source with knowledge of Cohen’s case confirmed that the passage was meant to invoke Manafort’s behavior.

The missives from Cohen and his legal team haven’t gone unnoticed. Trump himself struck back at his former fixer on Saturday night during a Fox News interview with a perplexing call for investigators to investigate Cohen’s father-in-law’s finances. “I guess he didn’t want to talk about his father-in-law. He’s trying to get his sentence reduced,” the president said.

Several other ex-Trump aides have turned on their former colleagues.

Rick Gates, who served under Manafort as deputy campaign chairman and then played a prominent role organizing Trump’s inauguration, has been cooperating with Mueller since pleading guilty last February. He served as a star witness against Manafort during his former boss’s trial in Alexandria, Va., where the longtime GOP operative was convicted on several charges of bank and tax fraud.

Gates is still spilling his ex-colleagues’ secrets to the special counsel. In a court filing earlier this week, an FBI agent recounted how Gates snitched on Manafort’s clandestine effort to get people appointed to Trump’s new administration in January 2017.

Attorneys for Michael Flynn have taken a more subtle approach.

His lawyers tried to compare the former Trump national security adviser favorably to other Mueller targets when making the argument that Flynn didn’t deserve jail time for lying to the FBI. In doing so, they essentially called out two people: former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Dutch attorney Alex Van Der Zwaan.

In a court filing, Flynn’s lawyers insinuated that Papadopoulos, who served a 14-day sentence last year for also lying to the FBI, was more mendacious than Flynn because he had been “specifically notified of the seriousness of the investigation” into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The FBI also warned Papadopoulos that lying to investigators was a federal offense, it said. Flynn had received neither warnings, the filing pointedly noted.

As for Van Der Zwaan, who spent 30 days in prison before being deported, Flynn’s attorneys argued that he was a “trained attorney who was represented by counsel” during his FBI interview — again, unlike Flynn.

For now, Flynn’s fate remains in the air. His sentencing has been postponed so he can continue cooperating in the Mueller probe.

The feuding among Trump associates isn’t just happening among people who have already been charged.

Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone — a Mueller target because of suspicions he had privileged knowledge that WikiLeaks was sitting on a stolen cache of Hillary Clinton campaign emails — has been on a PR blitz to tarnish several former friends as liars.

Stone has repeatedly derided New York-based liberal talk show host Randy Credico, placing the blame for any WikiLeaks backchannel communication on his ex-pal. Similarly, Stone has lobbed effusive insults at Jerome Corsi, the right-wing author and conspiracy theorist who has also drawn Mueller’s interest because of possible links to WikiLeaks. In an Instagram post last month, Stone accused Corsi of “working with Mueller to sandbag me on a fabricated perjury charge.”

They all have good reason to point the finger at each other. Stone has long said he expects to be indicted for lying to Mueller — a charge he denies. And Corsi’s lawyers have circulated a draft court document showing Mueller wanted their client to plead guilty to a false statement charge they say is bunk.

Open warfare in Trump’s orbit has produced its share of schadenfreude, as well.

“Justice was well served today,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said in an NPR interview last August after Cohen pleaded guilty and Manafort was convicted on the same day.

Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House senior strategist, was ousted from Trump’s circle after he almost gleefully predicted trouble for the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who is in Mueller’s crosshairs for an election-year meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Clinton.

“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” he said in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.”

Annemarie McAvoy, a defense attorney and media consultant who previously represented Gates, said she wasn’t surprised by all of the discord. It starts with the president and trickles down to all the people who have worked for him, she said.

“Of course every attorney is going to try to represent his or her client as zealously as possible and make them look the best and make everyone around them, who might say anything bad about them, look worse,” McAvoy said.

Typically in cases dealing with a large number of people from the same side of an organization, co-defendants will demonstrate some collegiality with each other. But, McAvoy said, there’s a different dynamic at play when none of the people who have been caught in the Mueller probe are on the same team anymore.

“All of these people have to try to, assuming they’re not going to jail, to make a living, deal with their neighbors, try to have some sort of normal life after this,” she said.

To Democrats, the infighting has occasionally prompted new legal concerns. Several House chairmen issued a warning to the president on Sunday after he went after Cohen’s father-in-law, saying Trump appeared to be obstructing Congress’s oversight functions.

“Organized crime and international money laundering are a dirty business,” former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told POLITICO. “It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest as the ship is sinking the rats are jumping out.”

Some lawmakers had already boarded the large blue bus, emblazoned with the U.S. Air Force logo and the words “Integrity, Service, Excellence,” when President Donald Trump put a swift end to it all.

Parked outside the Rayburn House Office Building on Thursday, they were prepared to slip out of town quietly on a military jet for a secret trip to visit troops in a Middle East war zone.

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It soon became a bus to nowhere.

Day 27 of the nation’s longest government shutdown had some of the House’s most powerful leaders — their party back in control for the first time in eight years — sitting on a tinted bus surrounded by a cloud of confusion. The standoff between the nation’s two most powerful politicians had just sunk even lower with a dramatic act by a defiant president.

The congressional delegation, or CODEL as it’s known, was supposed to be led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who on Wednesday requested the president postpone his State of the Union address amid the ongoing partial government shutdown. A group of seven lawmakers, along with top staffers, was headed to Brussels to meet with NATO commanders and then to Afghanistan to visit U.S. military leaders and troops.

Pelosi’s office did not reveal details about the trip publicly in order to protect her and other lawmakers’ safety. CODELs traditionally are announced shortly after the lawmakers arrive overseas.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) spilled some of the beans to reporters earlier in the day, criticizing the speaker for taking a trip to Brussels while the government remains partially shuttered with 800,000 federal workers either furloughed or working without pay.

For more than 24 hours, Trump had maintained unusual discipline in not responding to Pelosi’s move to reschedule or cancel his formal State of the Union speech in the House chamber.

The president’s strike back landed in reporters’ inboxes just after 2 p.m., postponing the trip less than an hour before lawmakers were scheduled to leave the Capitol. “Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative,” said the president, who visited troops in a different war zone — Iraq — just a few days after the shutdown began in December.

Pelosi’s office learned from reporters about the president’s letter to her.

At the time, the delegation’s mode of transportation to Joint Base Andrews — the Air Force bus — was parked outside the Rayburn building on the south side of Capitol.

It eventually made its way to the east front of the Capitol building, where reporters chased after it and, after it parked, tried to identify the lawmakers on board through the tinted windows.

At least three dozen journalists were accompanying the bus as it made its journey around the Capitol complex, while Capitol Police officers kept them at bay and instructed anxious gawkers to stay behind the group of reporters.

Wide-eyed tourists were taking photos of the bus on their smartphones, suspecting someone important must be on board. One reporter grabbed a shared electric scooter and rode toward the bus, leaving everyone else in the dust.

Soon, officers escorted bomb-sniffing dogs around the press, a common security practice on Capitol Hill when television equipment is being used.

The crowd began to dwindle as two large buses carrying Republican senators from their retreat arrived on the Senate side, spurring reporters to sprint in the opposite direction to speak with them.

Still, the CODEL’s lawmakers and their staffers were not getting off the bus.

“This is ridiculous,” one reporter said. “What are we even doing?”

The stunned officials were trying to understand whether their trip really was canceled. Phone calls and messages were flying between those on the bus and officials inside the Capitol, according to aides.

Suddenly, the bus started rolling to the Senate side of the Capitol. It left the Capitol complex and drove slowly in front of the Supreme Court.

Less than five minutes later, the bus was right back in front of the House chamber, stunning the jacket-less reporters, photographers and camera operators who were almost sweating in 35-degree weather chasing after the bus. The lawmakers eventually got off the bus but wouldn’t comment extensively on the situation.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House intelligence committee and a perennial Trump critic, was among the lawmakers on the bus. He was joined by Democratic Reps. Eliot Engel of New York, Mark Takano of California, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Susan Davis of California, and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts.

“This is obviously an action directed at the speaker,” Schiff told reporters after exiting the bus. “And we think, as far as we can tell, this has never happened in the annals of congressional history.”

As he slipped into Pelosi’s office, the bus remained parked outside the House chamber, leaving reporters wondering: Could the trip be back on?

That prospect was soon dashed. The bus rolled away just after 5 p.m., as did any hope that a fruitful behind-the-scenes negotiation with the White House would emerge.

The start of the new Congress was supposed to be all about the historic freshman class. Instead, it’s been all about the historic government shutdown — and frustrated House Democrats are looking to change that.

When a handful of new members huddled Tuesday morning to strategize, Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) suggested sending a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) demanding he reopen the government.

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Lawmakers liked the idea, according to members who attended the planning session, but it would take some time to pull it together.

“Why don’t we do something today?” suggested Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.). “Let’s just go over there.”

Hours later, the group marched from an impromptu, outdoor news conference to McConnell’s Capitol office, with reporters and cameras in tow.

It was the first in a series of moves freshman Democrats are planning to put their own stamp on the bitter battle over President Donald Trump’s border wall and a shutdown that has consumed the start of their congressional careers.

“One thing [Trump’s] proven to be very good at … is taking the attention and controlling the narrative,” Hill said. “So we’re trying to do what we can to pull that back as much as possible.”

Members are growing restless — though not ready to bend to Trump — over the fact that the newly empowered House Democratic Caucus has had to devote its attention and resources toward the standoff, now in its 27th day and the longest in U.S. history.

“This is not how I thought my first weeks of Congress would be,” said Rep. Lauren Underwood, a 32-year old Democrat from Illinois. “That’s OK. Because we were sent here for such [a] time.”

The new lawmakers are hoping to use the group’s collective star power to help get their message across.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a 29-year-old liberal firebrand who has 2.4 million Twitter followers, can’t walk around the Capitol without being swarmed by a throng of reporters and photographers. The new Congress has also garnered widespread media attention for having more minorities, women and young people than ever before.

“We collectively have more attention, more of a public voice, than probably most of the other members at this point,” Hill said. “So how can we use that to our advantage?”

“We continue to exhaust every single legislative option, but now I think we just have to find ways to get creative and build that pressure,” added Ocasio-Cortez.

One of the tactics they discussed during their sit-down meetings and in informal conversations, according to lawmakers, is how to leverage social media to keep the pressure on the GOP. So when they swarmed McConnell’s office on Tuesday, they also debuted a new hashtag: #whereismitch.

The next day, they decided to hand deliver their letter — signed by 30 House freshman — to McConnell’s office. And later that night, they took turns delivering a series of speeches on the House floor. The so-called “special order speeches” usually disappear into the C-SPAN ether, but these caught notice on Twitter.

The freshmen’s moxie has caught some veteran lawmakers by surprise.

“I was talking to a senator last night. He said he was here 16 years in the House and never stepped foot on the Senate side,” Underwood said. “We’ve been here for two weeks, and I’ve been over twice, searching all around for Sen. McConnell to say: ‘Sir, do your job.’”

The campaign hasn’t been flawless. At one point during their journey to McConnell’s office, they realized they had run out of copies of their letter and asked for one back. McConnell’s office was nice enough to print them extra copies.

The day before, the group of lawmakers hit a snag when some of their staffers forgot their ID badges and couldn’t get into the Senate after the news conference.

But members involved in the strategy sessions said they are used to the more on-the-fly approach, and dismissed the notion that their effort was simply a publicity stunt.

“We all came from grassroots campaigns that were not traditional, and they worked,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.).

Some freshmen, however, prefer less confrontational tactics.

Democratic Reps. Max Rose of New York and Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who both represent swing districts, joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers for a meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, though the talks yielded little progress.

Newly elected Democrats say they all share the same goal: getting the government reopened. The freshman group may meet again next week to hash out their next moves if both sides are still dug in.

“This class was sent here to shake things up,” said the 34-year-old Joe Neguse (D-Colo.). “We’re not going to sit idly by.”

John Bresnahan and Heather Caygle contributed to this report.