I’m what people used to call a “news junkie.” Every morning I get awake to NPR and then have coffee with the New York Times. In the evening I spend at least two hours with cable news, PBS and MSNBC (just as you expected). I watch congressional hearings and political speeches and events. Nonetheless, I found the saga of our most regrettable president’s reactions to the 2020 national election a difficult narrative to get my head around. Now that I’ve read the latest official indictment of our ex-president, a good many of my assorted misunderstandings have been replaced by a relatively secure grasp of the events and what lay behind them. I heartily recommend that document to anyone with an interest in politics, especially a desire to find a coherent and trustworthy account of what transpired during those extraordinary few months when the normal democratic process was disrupted, and the people’s sovereignty called into question.

TV and press coverage of the indictment focused heavily upon its charges against Trump; I found most enlightening the evidentiary narrative of Trump’s and his co-conspirators’ plots and actions. Perhaps it would encourage reluctant readers of the indictment to examine the text if I outlined the narrative, indicating the pages on which the various episodes begin and end.

The trump indictment is 45 pages long and can be read in roughly that number of minutes. In its first nine pages it provides 1) an account of all the conspiracy charges against Trump; 2) a list of his six co-conspirators (descriptions but no names); 3) an acknowledgement that Trump had a perfect free-speech right to challenge the election results, and Republicans had a right to initiate court cases in an effort to establish election fraud. (No listing of those cases in given, but there were 64 in total, 63 of which were eventually dismissed and one was approved but later reversed by the Supreme Court); 4) a listing of Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud; and 5) an account of all those individuals and groups, both outside of, and within, the Trump administration (some created by Trump himself) who investigated those allegations, and made Trump aware that they were all false, and that he had definitely lost the election.

That last account, I should point out, is essential in establishing that Trump, soon after the election, knew that he had lost, and therefore his persistent claims of voter fraud thereafter were knowing lies, hence evidence of criminal actions. Keep in mind that all the actions and discourse reported in this indictment will presumably be verified by testimony during the trial.

Beginning on page 9, the indictment provides an account of Trump’s initial effort to nullify the election results, and thereby defraud the United States. He put this scheme — surely one of the most ambitious scams in American history — into action on November 13. It consisted in trying to persuade selected states that they should declare their elections null and void because of massive voter fraud, with the consequence of suspending the national vote-count process and preventing Trump’s loss. This scheme targeted Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The indictment provides details of Trump’s and his co-conspirators’ deceitful interactions with each state’s officials. The scheme never showed much promise, because, though the states were willing to look into charges made by Trump and his cohorts, no serious cases of voter fraud ever turned up and, ultimately, no state saw any need to declare its vote invalid.

On page 21, the indictment begins to describe another illegal scheme of Trump and co-conspirators. This plan originated in early December 2020 and involved contriving to get electors who would have cast votes for Trump with the Electoral College (had he won in their seven states), to send their official votes to the vice president and congress as though they were legitimate. The idea was to create a fake controversy at the certification proceeding and enable the vice president to count their votes rather than the legitimate ones and then declare Trump the winner. The plan was modified over time but was diligently pursued. Some Trump Electors who doubted the legality of submitting their invalid votes were told the lie that only after Trump had notified a state that their count was being legally challenged would they be asked to do so. This plan eventually failed, though the fraudulent votes were actually submitted. Some of those who sent in those votes are now being prosecuted in their respective states.

On page 27, the indictment takes up a scheme linked with the electors’ strategy: Trump’s attempt to use the Justice Department to persuade state governments that voter fraud had actually occurred, so submitting alternative electoral college votes made sense. Trump wanted the Justice Department to send letters to the state governments falsely claiming that the DOJ had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States” — that’s a quote from a letter drafted by a Justice Department employee at Trump’s request. Trump intended to make that employee the acting Attorney General of the U.S. in order to get the letter sent. This scheme fell through because the DOJ said that it wouldn’t send such a letter, and if Trump made that appointment, that there would be a mass resignation of DOJ employees.

On page 32, the indictment begins its account of the plan to enlist the Vice-President in fraudulently altering the election results at the Certification event on Jan. 6. From late December up until Jan. 6, Trump pressured Vice President Pence to either simply reject the legitimate electoral votes, approve the fraudulent votes and declare him to be president, or at least return the decision of which votes to count to the states. Pence resisted, on the legitimate grounds that the constitution did not, in fact, give him the power to do any such thing. Trump kept trying, even after rioters took over the Capitol.

On page 39, the indictment recounts Trump’s behavior during the riot at the capitol, his refusal to do anything to stop it or reduce its violence and his remarks intended to further enrage the crowd at Pence’s failure to act. We also learn that he and his co-conspirators attempted, after the riot had been quelled, to convince congress to postpone the transfer of power to the new president, hoping that states might still call for a reversal of their voting results.

The remainder of the indictment, from pages 43 to 45, briefly states the remaining charges against Trump (all of which were illustrated by the preceding narrative): that he attempted to obstruct an official proceeding (counts two and three) and conspired to deny citizens their right to vote (count number four).