re: Place your bets, is this a sting or coup ?

It is Deep State Legal Formalism and while technically aligned with the letter of the law, it's completely outside the spirit of the Law. It is everything the Left has always hated when applied to them. It has the momentum of the Deep State and the Deep State media as well as the entirety of Progressive culture behind it. So it will be loud and noisy and the very worst among us will have the loudest voice.

My belief has always been that once you let the beast out of the cage, you don't know where it's going to go. So while The Left celebrates now, they are likely to cry later. When you attempt to Criminalize policy differences and you personalize politics to this degree it tends to bounce back on you. Because nobody is 100% clean, and the Democrats are UNIQUELY corrupt.