By now you’ve no doubt heard that on Tuesday, Donald Trump notched his third indictment in the span of nearly four months when he was charged by the Justice Department for his plot to overturn the 2020 election. While most people will recall many of the steps Trump took to stay in power in the weeks following his loss to Joe Biden—ballot-switching Italian satellites, anyone?—the 45-page indictment unveiled by special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors lays out in granular detail the ex-president’s scheme to steal a second term. Though certain individuals have claimed that Trump believed his own lies, the indictment makes the case that, in reality, he knew they were bullshit and sold them to the public anyway in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

Obviously, the whole thing is incredibly bad for Trump—not from a political standpoint, given that indictments only improve his standing among Republicans,* but from the one wherein he faces literal decades in prison should he be convicted on all counts. Still, some aspects of the indictment seem extra, extra bad for him.

Things like:

The conversation with Mike Pence that appears to prove Trump knew full well that he wasn’t allowed to just block the election results, and was lying about it anyway

We’ve long known that Trump tried everything he could think of to get Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s win—including reportedly calling Pence a “pussy” and saying they wouldn’t be friends anymore if the then VP didn’t agree. But the indictment reveals further instances of Trump browbeating Pence in an attempt to get him to do his bidding—and, even more crucially, it appears to contain evidence that the then president was knowingly lying about the election to his supporters. As investigators note:

On December 25, when the Vice President called the Defendant to wish him a Merry Christmas, the Defendant quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and his request that the Vice President reject electoral votes that day. The Vice President pushed back, telling the Defendant, as the Vice President already had in previous conversations, “You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.”

On December 29, as reflected in the Vice President’s contemporaneous notes, the Defendant falsely told the Vice President that the “Justice Dept [was] finding major infractions.”

On January 1, the Defendant called the Vice President and berated him because he had learned that the Vice President had opposed a lawsuit seeking a judicial decision that, at the certification, the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution. The Vice President responded that he thought there was no constitutional basis for such authority and that it was improper. In response, the Defendant told the Vice President, “You’re too honest.” Within hours of the conversation, the Defendant reminded his supporters to meet in Washington before the certification proceeding, tweeting, “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C., will take place at 11.00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”

Emphasis ours.

The extremely long list of people who told Trump the election was not stolen and that his claims of fraud were false

Essential to Smith’s case is proving that Trump knew he was lying, and the indictment includes a comically long list of people who told Trump, in no uncertain terms, that Biden won fair and square. Those people include:

• The vice president
• Senior leaders at the Justice Department
• The director of national intelligence
• Officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
• Senior White House attorneys 
• Senior staffers on Trump’s reelection campaign 
• State legislators and officials 

That’s in addition to, as the indictment says, “[s]tate and federal courts—the neutral arbiters responsible for ensuring the fair and even-handed administration of election laws—reject[ing] every outcome-determinative post-election lawsuit filed by the Defendant, his co-conspirators, and allies, providing the Defendant real-time notice that his allegations were meritless.”

The email in which a member of Trump’s own advisory team called the election-fraud claims by the president’s coup-plotting lawyers “conspiracy shit”

That adviser is said to be Jason Miller, who, as noted in the indictment, wrote in a December 2020 email: “[I]t’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”

The part about Mike Pence’s chief of staff notifying the Secret Service that Trump was putting the VP’s life in danger

Being a public figure like a vice president comes with serious risks, hence round-the-clock Secret Service protection. But usually, when a person signs up for this position, they don’t expect potential threats on their life to stem from the president of the United States, a.k.a. their boss. From the indictment:

Also on January 5, the Defendant met alone with the Vice President. When the Vice President refused to agree to the Defendant’s request that he obstruct the certification, the Defendant grew frustrated and told the Vice President that the Defendant would have to publicly criticize him. Upon learning of this, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff was concerned for the Vice President’s safety and alerted the head of the Vice President’s Secret Service detail. 

That was clearly a wise move on the part of Pence’s chief of staff, as Trump made good on his pledge to publicly criticize his VP, telling his supporters, among other things, that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” During the attack on the Capitol, Pence was moved to a secure location as rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” and, as revealed during one of the January 6 committee’s public hearings, the VP’s Secret Service detail feared the pro-Trump mob was going to kill them. (Trump would later claim that Pence deserved the chants calling for his hanging.)

How about when one of Trump’s unnamed, unindicted coconspirators suggested violence was necessary to keep him in power?

Not a great moment:

Also on January 4, when Co-Conspirator 2 acknowledged to the Defendant’s Senior Advisor that no court would support his proposal, the Senior Advisor told Co-Conspirator 2, “[Y]ou’re going to cause riots in the streets.” Co-Conspirator 2 responded that there had previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic. After that conversation, the Senior Advisor notified the Defendant that Co-Conspirator 2 had conceded that his plan was “not going to work.”

That coconspirator has been identified as Trump attorney John Eastman. More on him in a moment.

One of Trump’s coconspirators was still—still!—trying to get Pence to block Biden’s win hours after the insurrection

Yes, even after Trump’s followers attacked the Capitol and threatened to kill the vice president of the United States, coconspirator 2—remember him from before?—was still attempting to get the election overturned.

Per the indictment:

At 11:44 p.m., Co-Conspirator 2 emailed the Vice President’s Counsel advocating that the Vice President violate the law and seek further delay of the certification. Co-Conspirator 2 wrote, “I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the ECA] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.”

Coconspirator 1—a.k.a. Rudy Giuliani**—admitted he and Trump had nothing

Per the indictment:

On December 1, Co-Conspirator 1 met with the Arizona House Speaker. When the Arizona House Speaker again asked Co-Conspirator 1 for evidence of the outcome-determinative election fraud he and the Defendant had been claiming, Co-Conspirator 1 responded with words to the effect of, “We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.” 

Is there really anything to add?

*Nearly one quarter of whom actually believe he’s a crook and still want him to be president again anyway!

**An adviser to Giuliani previously told Vanity Fair that “every fact Mayor Rudy Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good faith basis President Donald Trump had for the actions he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment.”