When federal prosecutors on Jan. 13 indicted a right-wing leader for “seditious conspiracy” related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, they rightly focused attention on the key goal of both rioters and Trump-linked plotters: subversion of a presidential election.

One must rush to add the caveats that 1) many or even most rioters weren’t aiming at real insurrection and 2) there is still no evidence the rioters and the Trump team were in cahoots or that the Trumpsters planned the riot itself.