If you listen very carefully, you can actually hear it — the clawing and scratching of an increasingly desperate figure whose political strength is admittedly undiminished but who has always possessed a primal fear of criminal exposure.
Today, Donald Trump stands fully exposed in the depths of his political depravity, and his dedication to carrying out corrupt and allegedly criminal acts has been laid bare. And not by radical leftists or crazy prosecutors or even any of us in the media.
The indictment makes the coup plot Trump directed crystal clear for the world to see.
He was exposed by his innermost inner circle — and the really committed ones at that. The Trump officials who stayed on until the bitter last days of a bitter presidency tell us the riveting story of not one, not two, but three alleged criminal conspiracies that Trump stands accused of by the United States government.
By the numbers, special counsel Jack Smith has charged three criminal conspiracies, four criminal counts, listed six unindicted co-conspirators and shined a spotlight on the one man at the center of all of it who was willing to subvert democracy in order to overturn his election defeat.
The indictment makes the coup plot Trump directed crystal clear for the world to see. Here's how the Justice Department explains the first criminal count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.:
The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified.
The indictment then goes on to lay out the details of that alleged conspiracy — and with it, the entire coup plot and the vast criminal exposure Trump faces.
This is an excerpt from Wednesday's episode of "Deadline: White House." It has been slightly for length and clarity.