Last month, Facebook’s “Memories” feature reminded me of a post I’d made in the summer of 2016, right after the Democratic and Republican national conventions made it official that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would face off in that fall’s presidential election. “The next four months are going to be really exhausting, aren’t they?” I asked.

Such naivete. 

Four exhausting months have become 84, and the end is nowhere in sight. Trump was indicted Tuesday, his second federal indictment and his third indictment overall. These charges, related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, are the most serious: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction, and conspiracy against the right to vote. They might also be the hardest to prove. 

As Sarah explains in The Collision, “Trump lied to the American people repeatedly about the results of the 2020 election. He pressured elected officials to do things that would have been good for him politically and bad for the country. He allowed a mob to overtake the Capitol while he lobbied senators for their votes, and he considered replacing his attorney general with an incompetent toady who would support his political whims. But none of that is criminal if Trump believed the election was riddled with fraud.”  (Emphasis mine.)