But this is the most potent ingredient of this third indictment. Here we have the most complete picture of Donald Trump: the incompetence, the neediness, and the despotism. Trump was desperate to hold onto power because he didn’t want to seem like a loser. It’s also very possible that he wanted to remain in office because it was a sturdy shelter from the various criminal investigations swirling around himself and his companies. And, not for nothing, but he probably wanted to maintain his grip on the presidency because he had, despite massive resistance, started to finally install loyalists in positions of power and was realizing just how much he could do if the federal government was remade in his own rank image.
In any case, to do so he engaged in several criminal schemes that tested the limits of America’s political and legal systems, both of which bent without breaking. These ventures culminated in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which resulted in several deaths—and, it is worth underlining, hundreds of prosecutions. Yet the attempted sacking of the Capitol wouldn’t have happened without Trump’s many other assaults, big and small, on American democracy in the months prior. Trump led that riot without exactly orchestrating it and, as a result, has thus far evaded prosecution.
The images of January 6—cops beaten with their own weapons, insurrectionists gawking in the halls of the Capitol, rioters yelling about their desire to lynch the then vice president and speaker of the house—have understandably dominated the conversation surrounding Trump’s attempt to reverse a legitimate election. But all his practiced machinations that led up to that day should be understood as part of the attack as well: They represented a systematic onslaught against American democracy and were launched with the intention to undo it in the most fundamental way.