This is horrifically bad. There is no other word for it than a coup. We already knew that one of the central perpetrators privately described herself as running the “shadow government,” meaning an unelected apparatus operating behind and against the government the American people had actually chosen. But this disclosure takes it into much darker territory. They were not merely running a shadow government around Trump. They were using the FBI and intelligence apparatus to neutralize politically devastating information about Biden during the 2020 election. And they succeeded. Trump was not reelected. That means the unelected state apparatus did not merely defy an elected president, it secretly intervened in the democratic process to help drive him from power and install his opponent. That is a coup. It may not have involved tanks in the streets or guns at the palace gates, but it is no less grave. And perhaps the most grotesque part is what came afterward. Everyone involved was simply allowed to walk away, resume their careers, collect their pensions, write their books, get television gigs, and live as if the most appalling abuse of state power in modern American history never happened.