In an Zoom call last summer with scholars and academics, Donald Trump admitted that he lost the 2020 election, a statement that undermines any claim he’s made about fighting for the integrity of the election and making his legal position less tenable in investigations of the January 6th domestic terrorist attack.

In a story written for The Atlantic, Julian E. Zelizer, a history and public-affairs professor at Princeton University and the author of a one of the first academic studies of the Trump administration, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment, writes that Trump unexpectedly joined a Zoom call with historians in an attempt to pathetically convince them that his term as president wasn’t as disastrous as it really was.

But in the midst of his various excuses for why things imploded during what academics rated one of the worst presidencies in US history, Trump made the statement “when I didn’t win the election.”  That shocking admission–at the time, at odds with his public statement that he had won the election but it was stolen from him–shows that he understood he was not victorious, and sets him up for potential criminal charges.

Facing accusations that he intended to illegal overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost, Trump has stated that he did not believe the results of the election, giving him a plausible defense for his actions.  His statements admitting that he lost–as well as testimony from multiple aides and advisors who told him he lost to his face–undermine any legal position in which he could claim he was acting in good faith.