The second televised hearing from the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, got off to a slow start.
A key witness, former Trump campaign manager William Stepien, was subpoenaed to testify live but pulled out shortly before the Monday morning hearing when his wife went into labour.
Regardless, the Democrat-led committee, which has two Republican members, continued to lay out its allegations that former US president Donald Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The committee shared further evidence Mr Trump ignored numerous credible sources — including his staff and members of his family — who told him his outlandish claims of election tinkering were completely unfounded.
"Today we will demonstrate the 2020 election was not stolen," said congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, one of seven Democrats on the committee.
"We will present evidence that Mr Trump's claims of election fraud were false, that he and his closest advisers knew those claims were false, but they continue to peddle them anyway."
Ms Lofgren also explained how Mr Trump elicited millions of dollars in donations for post-election legal disputes he knew he would lose.
"The big lie was also a big rip-off," she said.
Here's what we learned.
Donald Trump's attorney-general dismissed his 'bogus' fraud claims
During its first hearing, the committee aired a snippet of former US attorney-general William Barr's recorded testimony in which he described Mr Trump's claims the election was stolen as "bullshit".
On Tuesday, it revealed several more significant portions of Mr Barr's testimony.
"Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway, and this happened, as far as I can tell, before there was actually any potential evidence," he said.
Mr Barr described how Mr Trump jumped on the so-called "red mirage", a phenomenon that gives Republicans, who more often vote in person, early leads in election counts as mail-in ballots, favoured by Democrats, slowly roll in.
He added that "everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night", but the former president tuned out the advice.
In their first meeting at the White House following the election, Mr Barr recalled Mr Trump sharing his sprawling theory of election fraud, before demanding to know why the Department of Justice (DOJ) was not investigating.
"The department doesn't take sides in elections and the department is not an extension of your legal team," Mr Barr said he replied.
He told the committee the DOJ had looked into several such claims and found they were neither credible nor substantive enough to affect the election outcome.
"There was an avalanche of all these allegations of fraud that built up over a number of days and it was like playing Whac-a-Mole because something would come out one day and then the next day it would be another issue.
"I was influenced by the fact that all early claims that I understood were completely bogus and silly and usually based on complete misinformation."
Mr Barr said he was concerned the then-president had no interest in establishing the "actual facts".
"If he really believes this stuff, I thought he’d lost contact, or become detached from reality," he said.
The former president turned on 'team normal'
Despite not appearing in person, Mr Stepien was among several senior Trump campaign officials and White House aides, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, whose testimony was shown during the hearing.
Presented together, the statements from the various witnesses painted a picture of how the mood shifted inside the White House on election night as several key states began to swing in President Joe Biden's favour.
When former Fox political editor Chris Stirewalt, who also testified in the hearing, called Arizona for Mr Biden, many of the staff knew it would be near impossible to claw back victory.
"In every election, and certainly in a national election, you expect to see the Republican with a lead but it's not really a lead," Mr Stirewalt.
"When you put together a jigsaw puzzle, it doesn't matter which piece you put in first, it ends up with the same image."
Mr Stepien, who identified as part of "team normal", described the Trump campaign's chances of winning as "very, very, very bleak" as its lead narrowed.
Even so, an apparently "intoxicated" Rudy Giuliani, one of Mr Trump's most high-profile lawyers, told his boss to publicly declare victory.
"It was far too early to be making any calls like that," Mr Stepien said.
"My recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, it's too early to tell … but we're proud of the race we have run and we think we're in a good position and we will have more to say about this the next day.
Instead, in a televised address in front of a wall of American flags, Mr Trump seemed to take Giuliani's advice.
"Frankly, we did win this election," he said.
The 'Big Lie' was debunked
The second part of the hearing featured a panel of witnesses to help fact-check the many falsehoods Mr Trump and his allies used to justify more than 60 spurious lawsuits.
Benjamin Ginsberg, the well-known Republican election lawyer who represented former president George W Bush in his tight win against Al Gore, said the 2020 presidential election was "not close" by comparison.
"In 2000, that was 537 [votes in Florida] and close," he said.
"In this election, the most narrow margin was 10,000 and something in Arizona, and you just don't make up those sorts of numbers in recounts."
Of the 62 lawsuits Mr Trump filed, he lost 61 outright and the other didn't come out in favour of either candidate.
Roughly half were dismissed at the procedural stage.
Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner, said he received deaths threats after Mr Trump accused him of being a RINO, or Republican in name only, for debunking a claim thousands of dead people voted in his state.
"Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn't evidence of eight," Mr Schmidt said.
Another state official, BJay Pak, a former US attorney from Georgia, explained how a false rumour about "a suitcase of ballots" found in Atlanta took hold.
The Trump campaign raised $US100 million the week after the election
A key focus of the hearing was the way in which Mr Trump dragged out his legal strategy to keep fundraising off his false election fraud claims.
In her final comments, Ms Lofgren pointed out litigation generally did not continue beyond mid-December in an election year.
But a video presentation outlined how the Trump campaign would sometimes send as many as 25 emails a day calling on its supporters to donate to the "official election defence fund".
The committee said it found no such fund existed, but the campaign still raised around $US250 million — nearly $US100 million in the week following the election.
Most of the money allegedly went to a newly created Save America PAC, which spent it on various Trump-aligned properties or entities, including $US204,857 for the Trump Hotel Collection.
The remaining hearings are scheduled throughout June, with the third announced for Thursday, June 16, at midnight AEST.
