Aaron Blake for WaPo:

The picture of Donald Trump’s scheme to get the Justice Department to help him overturn the 2020 election has been significantly filled out in recent weeks. First came the disclosure that conservative lawyer John Eastman had authored a memo outlining the steps by which this would take place on Jan. 6. Then came a major report from the Senate Judiciary Committee detailing Trump’s pressure campaign to get the Justice Department to lay a predicate for that Jan. 6 plot.

So just how close did we come to an actual stolen election — stolen by Trump?

One thing has become pretty clear in recent weeks: The reason this plot was foiled was in large part because the Justice Department and then-Vice President Mike Pence opted not to go along with it. But what if they had? Or what if Trump had followed through on firing acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen and replacing him with the DOJ official who was willing to do his bidding, Jeffrey Clark?