It has been one of those days as a political commentator where you have to chuck out what you've been working on and start all over again. While I had three-fourths of a column written about new election-interference indictments handed down in Michigan today, late in the day (East Coast time) Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal grand jury indicted Donald Trump on four felony counts, all having to do with Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election had somehow been stolen from him.

I just finished listening to Smith give his brief statement to the press and then sat down and read all 45 pages of the indictment -- which I urge everyone to take the time to do. I will doubtlessly have much more to say about it all in the coming days, but wanted to write down a few snap reactions and then indulge in a bit of speculation -- on a mystery that will likely be solved by the rest of the political journalistic world by the time the sun goes down (if they're worth their salt at all, that is): who are the six unindicted (as of yet) co-conspirators?

Snap takeaways

The biggest takeaway from the indictment is that the charges mostly deal with Trump's Big Lie, and how it was turned into an action plan to subvert and eventually steal the election away from Joe Biden. Very little of the document deals with the insurrection attempt on January 6th (it is mentioned in passing throughout, and then in detail in the very last pages of the first indicted charge), but Trump was not charged with inciting the riot at the U.S. Capitol or actual sedition. This is probably because Smith and his prosecutorial team knew that these might wind up being the hardest charges to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law (it would probably get down to what exactly constitutes incitement, or "fighting words," which isn't always a slam dunk to prosecute).

The charges are very detailed, with a timeline that began very shortly after the 2020 election and continued through January 6th and beyond. It is shown how Trump knew full well that the lies he kept telling everyone who would listen were in fact lies, how it was proven to him over and over again that all his accusations of election fraud were bogus and/or false, and how Trump didn't care and kept repeating them anyway. He's still repeating some of them to this day, in fact.

The truly damning evidence deals with all the machinations which went on to create the "fake electors" in a handful of states, and how Trump tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to somehow slip these fake electors in to replace the real ones -- or at the very least "send it back to the legislators" so that they could do Trump's dirty work for him (even though not a single state legislature was willing to do so). Trump just wanted to throw enough sand in everyone's eyes to create mass confusion, which (thankfully) Pence refused to actually do.

Interesting note: Pence seems to have sung like a birdie to the investigation and grand jury. There are quotes and "contemporaneous notes" cited that could only have come from Pence himself. We'll see what this does to him, out on the Republican campaign trail.

Most amusing quote from the entire document (from pages 13 and 14):

With respect to the persistent false claim regarding State Farm Arena, on December 8, the Senior Campaign Advisor wrote in an email, "When our research and campaign legal team can't back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we're 0-32 on our cases. I'[] obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it's tough to own any of this when it's all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership."

The Co-Conspirators

As I said, I'll have much more to say later, when all of this has sunk in and I hear what others have to say about it, but let's move on to the parlor game of deciphering who all the co-conspirators actually are. There are six of them: four attorneys, one Justice Department official, and a political consultant. The descriptions which begin each segment are from pages 3 and 4 of the indictment, just for reference. I'm doing this off the cuff, just from remembering what has already come out about it all (mostly from the House committee investigation), and could easily be wrong about any of these guesses, I should also mention.

Co-Conspirator 1

Co-Conspirator 1, an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.

This is almost certainly Rudy Giuliani. From page 14:

Co-Conspirator 1 played the State Farm Arena video again, and falsely claimed that it showed "voter fraud right in front of people's eyes" and was "the tip of the iceberg." Then, he cited two election workers by name, baselessly accused them of "quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine," and suggested that they were criminals whose "places of work, their homes, should have been searched for evidence of ballots, for evidence of USB ports, for evidence of voter fraud."

Sure sounds like Rudy to me....

Co-Conspirator 2

Co-Conspirator 2, an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President's ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.

This is almost certainly John Eastman. From page 37, which references the rally Trump spoke at on January 6th:

Earlier that morning, the Defendant had selected Co-Conspirator 2 to join Co-Conspirator 1 in giving public remarks before his own. Co-Conspirator 2 told the crowd, "[A]ll we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at one o'clock he let the legislatures of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not. We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can't get the answer to this question."

The only two possibilities for these first two from the list of who spoke at Trump's rally that day are Eastman and Giuliani, and Eastman was the one heavily involved in trying to convince Pence of his bizarre interpretation of the Constitution.

Co-Conspirator 3

Co-Conspirator 3, an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded "crazy." Nonetheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3's disinformation.

My money is on Sidney Powell here, the craziest lunatic in the whole loony bunch -- someone actually seen as too crazy for the rest of them to even be associated with, in fact (which is really saying something).

Co-Conspirator 4

Co-Conspirator 4, a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.

This one isn't even a guess. This is Jeff Clark, the man Trump tried to install as attorney general because he was the only one who would have perverted the Justice Department to aid and abet the fake electors scheme -- or join in any other way of overturning the states' votes.

From page 30:

Also on the morning of January 3, Co-Conspirator 4 met with the Defendant at the White House -- again without having informed senior Justice Department officials -- and accepted the Defendant's offer that he become Acting Attorney General.

That's a lock -- Co-Conspirator 4 is Jeff Clark.

Co-Conspirator 5

Co-Conspirator 5, an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.

This one is somewhat of a tossup, as there aren't a whole lot of details about Co-Conspirator 5 in the charging document. My off-the-cuff guess is Jenna Ellis, but it could wind up being Ken Chesebro or Cleta Mitchell as well.

Co-Conspirator 6

Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.

This one is also anyone's guess. On page 23, there is a clue:

On December 7, Co-Conspirator 1 received the Wisconsin Memo and the Fraudulent Elector Memo. Co-Conspirator 1 spoke with Co-Conspirator 6 regarding attorneys who could assist in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states, and he received from Co-Conspirator 6 an email identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

That doesn't narrow it down very much, though. It could be any political consultant from Trump's campaign or beyond. I'll take a stab in the dark and say Peter Navarro, but I doubt I'm right in that.

Conclusion

This is all just from a first cursory reading of the indictment, and snap judgments often turn out to be wrong. Jack Smith seems to have put together another airtight case against Trump, and even though it wasn't required he took the time to fully lay out his case in the charging document (a "speaking indictment," in other words, chock full of details).

Donald Trump's Big Lie was just that -- a big lie -- from the very beginning. There was no truth in it, and Trump was told over and over and over again that all of his claims were just flat-out false. He knew full well he had gotten beat by Joe Biden, but his planetary-sized ego just couldn't accept that fact.

Trump's Big Lie wasn't some sort of sour political grapes he wrote about in a memoir later, he consciously used it to stoke doubt and further not just one but several schemes to overturn a free and fair American presidential election in real time. All that mattered to him was saving face and retaining power -- no matter what he had to do to achieve those goals.

This isn't some small thing. Millions of Americans' minds have been poisoned by Trump's Big Lie and most of them will never admit that it was a lie, because they are too personally invested in believing it. This undermines the American democratic system.

The other two criminal cases that have been filed against Trump do not deal with any of this. Today was the day when American democracy fought back. And we may get a reprise of it all from Georgia within a week or two as well.

Donald Trump tried to steal an election. He will now be held accountable for this shameful and disgracefully narcissistic act in a federal court of law. He could go to prison for it for a long time.

And this time, he will face a judge and jury from Washington D.C., not from South Florida.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant