The gap’s importance is difficult to exaggerate. The evidence of former President Donald Trump’s criminal intent with regard to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election is building, day by day, so relentlessly that at this point, a failure to prosecute becomes tantamount to a negation of the rule of law’s first principle—that no person “stand[s] above the law.”

Why is the gap so significant? If, as some analysts have hypothesized, Trump is so detached from the factual world that he actually believed his own Big Lie that the 2020 election was marred by fraud, that would make conviction for trying to steal the election difficult. Under this analysis, he would not have thought he was acting “wrongfully,” a necessary element for conviction on the charges to which he is most vulnerable.

Hiding one’s calls and conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, as it appears Trump did, rebuts his potential defense that he thought he was acting righteously. People who believe that their behavior is law-abiding do not cover it up in this way.