The criminal conspiracy will make you even more worried that he might win

It’s quite something to make Richard Nixon seem almost honorable and Watergate to be just a minor blemish in the democratic process. But Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election were of a completely different magnitude. This story was told succinctly and clearly Trump: The criminal conspiracy case, which, when it came to the violent events in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021, was gripping like a first-rate thriller. All the President’s Men 2If you want.

The focus of the documentary was the Georgia election interference case brought by the formidable Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis. Trump and 18 other co-defendants have been accused of crimes including extortion, and if convicted, the former US president faces prison sentences. But as we find out towards the end of the film, a guilty verdict seems increasingly unlikely as the case has stalled through repeated appeals.

Although it was clear that producer Jecca Powell (who had previously secured extensive interviews with Volodymyr Zelensky for her excellent BBC series) The Zelensky story) never spoke to Trump himself, she managed to nab two of his co-defendants: publicist Trevian Kutti and lawyer John Eastman. While Kutti, who allegedly tried to convince a Georgia poll worker to admit to a fraudulent vote count, seemed like a work, Eastman initially seemed more harmless.

Eastman, a legal scholar, came to Trump’s attention when he incorrectly questioned Kamala Harris’ eligibility to run for vice president in 2020 based on her U.S. citizenship status. When he was brought onto Trump’s team to lead the legal challenge to the election results, Eastman initially seemed like a useful idiot, a quixotic pawn in a larger game. That illusion was finally shattered when the film showed footage of him inciting the crowds outside Capitol Hill before the January 6 insurrection, clearly enjoying his moment in the sun.

Other notable interviewees included Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state for Georgia, who took Trump’s damning recorded phone call in which the president urged him to “find 11,780 votes” and throw out the state’s election results. Raffensperger recounted how he politely declined Trump’s request, sounding increasingly annoyed.

Many of those surveyed who resisted the “Stop the Steal” narrative continue to live in fear of Trump supporters still angry about the 2020 election results. Eric Coomer, who worked for Dominion, the company that provided the “rigged” voting machines in Georgia (and successfully sued Fox News for spreading the false allegations), asked to be interviewed in a motel room far from his home. It seems that in today’s febrile political climate one cannot be too careful.

And we only saw the trainers of an anonymous juror who voted to indict Trump and his co-defendants – this one was particularly upset by his arrogance in “pleading the fifth” (i.e. refusing to answer questions). Even the poor Fulton County Jail sheriff, Pat Labat, who was tasked with taking Trump’s mugshot, has received death threats.

The hero of the hour was former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to certify the false election certificates fabricated by Trump’s team – their last attempt. “Thank God he did the right thing,” said former Georgia Democratic Sen. Jen Jordan.

Aside from these original interviews, this was a clearly told narrative cleverly assembled from archival footage – scenes from the uprising are still shocking three years later. But Trump: the case of a criminal conspiracy was not simply a piece of recent history safely hidden in the past. It was also a frightening forewarning of the kind of election fraud (to say the least) that we can expect by next January.

‘Trump: The Criminal Conspiracy is streaming on BBC iPlayer