Takeaways: Inside the indictment on Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election

WASHINGTON — Ex-President Donald Trump’s unprecedented federal criminal indictment on Tuesday is a compelling, readable narrative of how Trump allegedly wielded “dishonesty, fraud and deceit” on multiple fronts to try to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump’s latest criminal indictment comes as he faces other federal charges over mishandling classified documents in Florida and, in a state case in Manhattan, paying hush money to cover up an affair with a porn performer. Another indictment is looming, in a state election interference case in Georgia.

Takeaways:

·   Some of the ground covered in the indictment about Trump’s various alleged schemes to stay in office is familiar, but what’s new is the revelation that former Vice President Mike Pence took, as the indictment says, “contemporaneous notes.”

·   This case will be tried in a Washington federal courtroom, with a jury pulled from this Democratic city before a judge tapped by former President Barack Obama.

The classified documents criminal case in Florida is being handled by a judge Trump nominated with a jury from a county that heavily voted for Trump.

·   The indictment covers Trump’s desperate moves to stay in power. When state officials wouldn’t play ball, Trump and co-conspirators drummed up false electors in seven key states, all part of a “corrupt” plan that in the end, depended on Pence to go along and not certify the election results on Jan. 6, 2021 — which Pence refused to do, even as Trump backers attacked the Capitol.

·   The indictment looks at the wreckage Trump — with his enormous power to persuade people to believe things that are not true — has left in his wake.

Trump spreading lies about election fraud that did not happen — and the repeated fake claims  that he won the election — that he was able to make to “appear legitimate” — created, the indictment said, an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger” that eroded “public faith in the administration of the election.”

·   Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, is still spreading the lie that he won the 2020 election — and his mounting legal jeopardy has not appeared to have made a dent in his popularity among potential GOP primary and caucus voters.

I’ve interviewed people over the years who tell me — with no uncertainty — that Trump won the election. Why? Because he said so.

I beg you if you believe this to read the indictment because it says the people “best positioned to know the facts” — many Republicans — told Trump he had lost his bid for a second term.

And they are, according to the indictment: Pence; senior leaders in Trump’s Justice Department; the director of national intelligence; the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; senior Trump White House lawyers; senior Trump 2020 campaign staff; state lawmakers; state officials; and state and federal courts.

·   Will Trump and his allies to try to discredit U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan because she said in her Senate questionnaire — prepared for her confirmation — that in 2012, she volunteered for Lawyers for Obama?

·   Trump had every right, the indictment said, to make the 2020 election outcome all about him — to challenge the election — even to make false claims. But there is a line he crossed that makes this about you — not Trump. Trump had no right, the indictment said, to pursue “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

Read the full indictment: