Lying to the FBI to impede an investigation is not minor. It's federal time. The investigation faltered partly because of these lies. (This is why Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Scooter Libby)
> Yeah he did, but the context is that Trump thinks there was election fraud, and millions of people also had the same concerns.
No, he doesn't. All the fraud claims were inflated to try to find a way to explain his loss and hold on to power. And if they were not, he said, on that call:'I just want to find 11,780 votes’. Plenty of witnesses.
That is not concern over fraud, it's an attempt to pressure the election officials to change the result by a specific number. There's no honesty or civic function there.
> There is precedent for what Trump was trying to do, and pursuing every legal path aggressively is still completely different than trying to end democracy.
Producing alternate slates of electors is a criminal offence. Which is why they met in secret -- one group, Georgia IIRC, met in a parking garage -- and tried to sneak into the state houses. It's an obvious, anti-democratic, criminal conspiracy. And we will know how it was co-ordinated and linked to Trump because Jenna Ellis has now pleaded guilty to her involvement in attempts to create a false slate in two states -- Georgia and Arizona.
> It was clearly meant to be a protest to show support and then it devolved into a large riot.
No, it wasn't. "Mike Pence didn't have the courage" shows you what it was about. It was an attempt to pressure Pence and the legislature into an illegal action. And everyone knew what would happen. The internet was alive with what was going to happen, days before, and it could have been stopped; stopping it would have been presidential. Because he had lost the election and there was no more measure for which "support" could possibly have a legal outcome that changed it.
> Let's not forget the Steele dossier that as far as I know was full of lies.
So what if it was? And it's not clear it was. It was opposition research. Initially funded by a Republican. But written by an experienced spy who did ordinary human intelligence work and qualified all his claims.
If I were a gambling man I'd bet that it is true in substance.