The law can be a frustrating thing. On January 6, 2021, President Trump wanted to prevent the U.S. Congress from formalizing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Electoral College victory because he knew it would mean he’d have to leave office two weeks later, at noon on January 20th. He conspired to prevent this by a number of means including pushing members of his party to make meritless challenges to the electors of several states while asking Vice-President Mike Pence, who presided over the count, not to accept the challenged electors. When Pence refused to go along with this plan, Trump sent a mob to the Capitol to stop the count through intimidation. He instructed them to “fight like hell” to keep him in office.

I think that’s about as concise a description I can make of Trump’s mindset that day. There were other shenanigans involved, including changes he made at the Pentagon that were probably intended to further his scheme, but the details matter less than the intent to stay in power by illegitimate means. January 6 was a failed coup.

Trump’s core motive is not in dispute, but the courts seem confused. They’re wondering whether it’s “plausible” that Trump actually saw the plundering of the Capitol Building as a good thing.

Donald Trump’s hours of silence while a violent mob ransacked the Capitol — egged on by his own words and tweets — could be plausibly construed as agreement with rioters’ actions, a federal judge suggested Monday.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta made the analysis as he pressed Trump’s lawyers about their efforts to dismiss a series of lawsuits against the former president seeking to hold him financially liable for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.

To his credit, Judge Mehta does find this theory plausible.

“What do I do about the fact the president didn’t denounce the conduct immediately?” Mehta wondered, homing in on a central focus of congressional investigators probing Trump’s conduct that day. “Isn’t that, from a plausibility standpoint, enough to at least plausibly infer that the president agreed with the conduct of the people that were inside the Capitol that day?

But it’s quite a bit more than plausible. It is certain. He didn’t launch a coup attempt with the expectation that it would involve a peaceful protest followed by failure. He had to be prepared to use quite a bit more violence, including in the following days, weeks, and months, if he had any prospect of successfully remaining in the White House.

Judge Mehta was holding a hearing involving three civil suits brought against the ex-president for his involvement in the events of January 6. Two of the suits were brought by Democratic members of Congress, and the other by two Capitol police officers who were injured during the riot. The question was whether a sitting president can do anything that might subject him or her to civil liability. And, to establish the answer to that question, it was apparently vital to understand if the allegations against Trump meet the low bar of plausibility.

So, for example, there was a debate among the lawyers over what constitutes campaigning versus the official responsibilities of the president. When Trump said he’d lead the mob to the Capitol (which he didn’t ultimately do) was he acting as a candidate or the commander-in-chief? Was he giving a political speech or failing in his duty to make sure the laws are obeyed?

These distinctions supposedly matter, as if there could be legitimate and constitutionally protected ways to carry out a coup.

I do sympathize with the idea that we don’t want our presidents getting sued nonstop while in office. But this is about a motherfucker who wouldn’t leave office. It’s also about civil suits that are being litigated now, during Biden’s presidency, not when they might distract a sitting president.

For the record, and quite predictably, Trump’s attorneys say there’s nothing a president can do that opens them to civil liability.

In the course of the arguments, Trump’s lawyers offered an exceptionally broad view of Trump’s immunity from civil lawsuits for his acts as president, claiming that virtually every statement Trump made was “immune.”

“That absolute immunity of the presidency is very important,” Binnall contended.

Mehta repeatedly pressed Binnall to come up with an example of anything a president could say in office that could result in civil liability. “I cannot think of an example,” Binnall replied. “The duties of the president are all-encompassing.”

But this is all beside the point. A defeated president cannot set a mob on Congress in a desperate and meritless effort to stay in power. If he or she does so, they instantly became the most dangerous criminal in the nation and should be treated commensurately with the threat they pose. They should be in a SuperMax prison for life, lest their millions of loyal supporters attempt to break them out and restore them to power.

Elba won’t cut it.

But we’re debating whether it’s possible that Trump approved of the January 6 riot. We can’t protect ourselves because we’re living in a dreamworld, and the law isn’t helping.