Nelson Peltz. Ike Perlmutter. Jeanine Pirro. Tom Brady. And Michael D. Cohen.
Those were among the names on a partial list of contacts sent to Donald J. Trump’s new gatekeeper in the White House, Madeleine Westerhout, by his former gatekeeper at the Trump Organization, Rhona Graff, after he became president in 2017.
Ms. Westerhout asked for the list because Mr. Trump, who talks on the phone almost constantly, would ask for numbers, and she would have to track them down from Ms. Graff individually. Shortly after Mr. Trump was inaugurated, Ms. Westerhout testified on Thursday at his criminal trial in Manhattan, she requested the list from Ms. Graff.
The one that was provided was incomplete. For instance, only one of his children’s phone numbers was on it. Two of his siblings — Maryanne Trump Barry and Robert Trump, both of whom have since passed away — were also on it.
Yet it provided a clear look at the kind of celebrity-laced 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.
There was Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon, who had never thought especially highly of Mr. Trump before his election. There were other people in the Murdoch media empire: Bret Baier and Sean Hannity, both Fox News hosts. Their colleague Ms. Pirro, a former district attorney in Westchester County — whose ex-husband, Al Pirro, had been a lobbyist for Mr. Trump’s business interests decades earlier — was also on the list.
Then there was Mr. Perlmutter, the wealthy former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, who is also a Mar-a-Lago member and Trump donor. There was Tom Barrack, a wealthy real-estate investor who first dealt with Mr. Trump when he purchased the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue.
There was Jerry Falwell Jr., who at the time led the evangelical Liberty University but was eventually felled by a sex scandal.
And there were two people on the contact list who knew Mr. Trump particularly well. One was Allen Weisselberg, who had worked for the Trump Organization since the days of Mr. Trump’s father, Fred Trump. Mr. Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to perjury in another case involving Mr. Trump, is currently incarcerated.
The second was Mr. Cohen, the personal lawyer and fixer who paid hush money to Stormy Daniels, the porn star at the heart of the falsified business records case against Mr. Trump in Manhattan, resulting in the first criminal trial of an American president.
