The 45 pages that skewer Trump’s bid to destroy American democracy

Two and half years in the making, special counsel Jack Smith's indictment presents a devastating case laced with telling detail

More than 1,000 people charged over the US Capitol riot, millions of pages of evidence compiled by the House January 6 committee, hundreds of hours of depositions of key players - all this has finally been boiled down to a 45-page indictment that accuses Donald Trump of attempting to destroy American democracy.

Why didn't they do this 2.5 years ago?" the former president asked peevishly on Tuesday, shortly before the indictment came down. The answer lies in the document itself: in its painstaking command of detail and in the cool, crisp legal language deployed by special counsel Jack Smith to make his case.