But we really need to know his state of mind to know if he acted corruptly.

Let me spoil some of tomorrow's primetime J6 summer finalé, then.

The timeline really does suggest that the timing of everything was coordinated at the top-most levels. Trump'd give the speech (holy shit I just watched 5 minutes of it and I don't think our brains were working well enough to register the true extent of his lunacy at the time), send his people off to the capitol (with their weapons, which he knew they had) at about 1:15 pm, and they'd hafta walk about a mile and half, two miles, or so, from the ellipse to the capitol building. Should take about 30 minutes to 45, depending on one's fervor. Militia dipshits had arrived at the capitol a bit earlier, presumably to initiate the agitation, and lo and behold, the rally onslaught begins to arrive a few minutes after the time House republicans have planned to object to Arizona's college elector slate, the alphabetically first state to come up for certification that had tried to send fake/illegal GOP electoral college votes. This is Mike Pence's final test, between 1:45 and 2:15 or so, just before evacuation. One last chance to unilaterally overturn the election by refusing to count contested elector slates. He decided not to overturn the election (mY hErOoOoO). Ten minutes later, after the chaos of the congress's evacuation, Trump tweets that Pence didn't have the courage to overturn the election, and the congress is in hiding. Now, it's fuckin' POTUS executive TV-time for a couple hours, and he really, realllllyyyyyyyy liked what he saw. Maybe the mob would yet prevail? Or Dan Fucking Bongino's SS coworkers could coax Pence into an Escalade, lock the doors (Mike Pence has surely not yet solved executive branch-level childlock), and whisk him far enough away to delay the vote certification, de-legitimizing the process? Ugh, they made Trump release a statement, eventually, which was surely annoying, for the poor guy, but luckily the entire Trump white house is full of fascist enablers, so the "be peaceful, totally! ;) ;) guys, haha" video message can be used to continue coup'ing. Aaaaaaaand been doin' it ever since.

I think the number one thing I was surprised to learn recently was that Trump desperately wanted to get to the capitol himself. I thought he sent his goons on their way, like suckers, never planning to endanger himself out in the fray, but nope, he seemed to be most concerned with increasing the odds of his coup's success to as high as possible. Maybe that's the most hitler shit he's ever tried to pull, at least in my mind.

What I mean to say is, I don't understand if/why you're doubting the Occam explanation here. Is your question whether or not Trump truly believes the election was stolen? That's like a legal defense of a bank robber along the lines of "My client, deep in his heart of hearts, felt that there was toxic alien money in your bank vault, and just wanted to help. Mary B., on facebook, and at least six other people told him about it via messenger. And plus, my client was apprehended in the act, so there's nothing to prosecute."

It's clear that this is the largest and most relatively straightforward case of seditious conspiracy since the civil war. It was obviously pre-meditated/intentional. I'm certainly not opposed to negging the government, myself, but I fucking hate fascist fucks making power grabs based on lies. If DoJ prosecutes at the highest levels, they will win hella lotta cases. Not saying all cases. But the J6 committee has done an OK+ job of relaying the conspiracy, and DoJ will do even better, in 2023, and in an actual court of law.

edit: oh don't fret, I never meant to imply that we're not doomed, we totally are, it'll just be interesting to watch DoJ try and mop this up in the interim.

Yeah Flynn's taped deposition footage was nuts. And of course, I had to internalize almost all of Chappelle's library my first semester of jokes school (still flunked out). Even more of course, holy shit, I also lost it when Flynn did a "15-second whispering with my lawyer" and then a 'fiff' after "Do you believe in the peaceful transition of power in the United States of America?", it was better than Chappelle, lolz.