Hello, it's the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

Trump's indictment for trying to reverse his 2020 loss brought back the sheer insanity of the end of his presidency: the DOJ and Pentagon were decapitated and stuffed with his cronies. Per the indictment, at least one Trump crony was willing to act on talk of invoking the Insurrection Act to put down the protests which would have erupted had Trump succeeded in stealing the election.

That in itself is a stunning appeal to violence, but it's a part of the coup attempt which is revealing in a different way. Trump's attempt to keep a grip on power was intensely legalistic; from the arguments in court to the fake electors scheme to Jeff Clark's above mention of the Insurrection Act, it all relied on sequential, discrete legal justifications to achieve an illegal result.

It's no accident that all of the co-conspirators described but not named in the indictment appear to have been conservative attorneys. Ken Chesebro, the Trump attorney who is largely responsible for devising the fake electors scheme AKA co-conspirator 5, genuinely believed when I met him last year that, as he put it, "this is what lawyers do." In his mind, he was simply advocating on his client's behalf, developing esoteric legal theories which could help his client resolve a dispute he had with the handling of the 2020 election.

I'm not trying to get into what may or may not be moral degeneracy in the legal profession. Rather, the intense focus on maintaining a facade of legality comes from at least a few factors (I won't pretend to identify them all).

Part of it is the sheer absurdity and audacity of what they were trying to do: reverse an election result. You need to act as if everything you're doing is part of some hidebound legal process to overcome that. There's also the necessity of it. Things were crazy, but not so crazy that violence alone would have worked (though John Eastman allegedly entertained the idea of resolving the election "in the streets"). You needed a legal process because Trump was trying to get the country away from the nation of laws that, at the time of his coup attempt, we still inhabited.

But there's a broader reason here, too, which stems from the role that questions about the rule of law played in our politics in the years before the Trump administration. There were burgeoning protests against police brutality and unjust treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system. Mass disillusionment with how the criminal justice system treated the little guy was paralleled by how it failed when it came to addressing criminality at the top, with the Obama administration failing to prosecute any executive responsible for the 2008 financial crisis. I'll admit that the cynicism which the above engendered led me astray: I didn't think DOJ would have the juice to bring charges against Trump. I was wrong.

But the lack of accountability there (created by or contributing to the above, you decide) did make it at least more plausible that all of these attorneys and politicians could wrap arguments that were only about the raw exercise of power against the result of the 2020 election in legal language. It's part of what's so important about the Trump indictment this week. Calling their bluff, not only on the idea that you can manufacture any dispute and demand that everyone treat it as legitimate, but on the idea that it's foolish to believe that the rule of law and equality before it still exists. And matters.
 

More on other news below. Let's dig in. 

— Josh Kovensky

Bringing The RNC's Plotting Out Of The Shadows

As the GOP became the "Party of Trump" it also became party to the plot to overturn the 2020 election.

There was evidence of this in Jack Smith's indictment and in text messages unearthed by TPM that showed how deeply Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was embedded in the effort to subvert the vote and keep Trump in power.

Smith surfaced an email that revealed McDaniel was helping Trump and his team keep tabs on the effort to have fake slates of electors declare him the winner, which was a central element of the larger plan. The special counsel also pegged Nov. 13, 2020 as the day Trump "launched his criminal scheme." That was the moment, according to Smith, that Trump's efforts veered from normal campaign gamesmanship into knowing he had been defeated and still deliberately spreading lies.

In light of the information in the indictment, TPM dug back into the Meadows texts and found that McDaniel was writing to the White House on the day Smith pegged as the start of the plot. In her messages, McDaniel promoted a conspiracy theory that the special counsel listed as one of the major falsehoods knowingly peddled by Trump as he tried to cling to power. She also talked with Meadows and other Trump allies about allocating resources to continue challenging the election result in key states.

This all means the leader of the main organization of the Republican Party was involved in multiple aspects of the alleged conspiracy from the moment it began.

And McDaniel wasn't the only one. Other texts from that day, which we published for the first time, show former Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward was in deep too. However, while Ward has drawn scrutiny for her role in the efforts to fight Trump's loss, McDaniel has largely escaped coverage and legal drama before this moment. Even a senior Trump campaign official who spoke to TPM about the new texts was surprised.

"Ronna's one that kind of did a good job of staying in the shadows," the official said. "That's pretty eye opening."

— Hunter Walker

Expelled Tennessee Dems First Order Of Business After Winning Back Seats? A Special Session On Gun Control

Reps. Justin Pearson of Memphis and Justin Jones of Nashville both easily reclaimed their seats in the Tennessee House in a Thursday special election. Their landslide victories came almost three months after the two young, Black Democrats were ​​expelled by Tennessee Republicans for participating in a peaceful gun protest on the House floor.

Ironically enough the first order of business for the officially reelected Democrats will be to attend a special session, scheduled for Aug. 21, on gun control. The special session was called for by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) in May after the Republican-led Legislature adjourned without trying to pass legislation that the governor pushed for that would keep firearms away from people who could harm themselves or others.

Jones taunted the Republican House Speaker in part responsible for his expulsion following his reelection, tweeting, "Well, Mr. Speaker, the People have spoken. The FIND OUT era of politics is just beginning. See you August 21st for special session."

— Emine Yücel

"It was like following a general into battle, but the general decided to stay home instead of fight. Especially when there are other Members who would love to have interviewed Archer but aren't on the Oversight Committee and not allowed in the room."

That's what an unnamed source told the Daily Beast after Rep. James Comer (R-KY) did not attend the (supposed) BOMBSHELL interview the House Oversight Committee had with Hunter' Biden's longtime business partner Devon Archer.

That's after Comer has spent the last several weeks parading himself from one primetime conservative TV show to another screaming about the so-called star witness for his bogus investigation into the Biden family.

But who can blame him? According to a Democrat on the Oversight Committee who actually did show up for the Fox News-hyped interview, the testimony was mostly a snoozefest. 

— Emine Yücel