The USDOJ Inspector General is investigating whether any DOJ officials (current or former) improperly tried to overturn the election results. (See, e.g. the story about a DOJ official proposing that Trump fire Acting AG Rosen and install him to that position so he could help overturn the election.)
I really don’t get how anyone could argue this was not an attempted coup.
It was set into motion months if not years in advance. In light of Trump’s ongoing statements and also what is known about him, people were talking well before the election about what what would happen if he refused to accept the results of the election. He was blatantly and specifically setting this up months before the election, by setting up claims that voting by mail was rife with fraud.
There were articles about what people should do if Trump engineered a false “win” (like, in the exact way he was trying to do, by getting officials to change numbers, throw out votes, refuse to certify counts, send competing slates of electors, or have Mike Pence just lie about the electoral vote count).
He told violent supporters to “stand down and stand by,” ahead of the election.
People were discussing, based on actions and chatter, the possibility of his supporters rising up and attacking multiple government targets at the state and federal levels, exactly as they did.
After the election, he over and over denied having lost, and whipped up his supporters with fraudulent claims of massive election fraud, which a majority of members of his party believe (even now).
He threatened state officials and asked them to falsify results. He, or people on his behalf, tried to get officials to not do their ministerial (that is, their required) duty of certifying vote counts.
On the 6th, he and his surrogates whipped up the crowd with claims of a stolen election, told them to March to the Capitol. He told them they needed to fight for their country. Then he stayed silent while his supporters broke into the Capitol building and sought out hidden lawmakers, who’d had to flee while in the process of counting the votes that would declare Biden the official winner of the election. He’d engineered baseless objections to that process, with over a hundred congressional supporters lending credence to his claims of massive election fraud.
Militias planned and plotted ahead of time, then attempted to carry out their plans to capture and/or kill legislators and Pence during the assault on the Capitol. Security at the Capitol was compromised, and National Guard troops were withheld by Trump or Trump officials until Pence, who was under siege, approved their use.
Afterward, Trump conveyed his love to the people who assaulted the Capitol, and reiterated that the election had been stolen, even after the insurrection was over.
We are still in the process of sorting out who-all was involved inside of the government.
I know some people don’t want to believe it could happen here, but if you imagine this being an account from another country, I don’t think there’s be any doubt.
I’m in the camp that doesn’t believe it’s accurate to refer to it as stupid or doomed to failure. There were multiple points where it failed only because public officials stood up to his pressure, at enormous personal and political cost. If you flip a couple of those choices to ones going along with it, we could have had an initially successful coup, followed potentially by a crisis about who the military and police would side with, followed by much more fighting.