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The officers’ recollections often were raw and unfiltered as they described being kicked, crushed and sprayed with chemical irritants by the encroaching mob. Dunn told the committee that, before Jan. 6, he had never “seen anyone physically assault a Capitol Police or MPD [officer], let alone witness mass assaults being perpetrated” with flagpoles, bike racks and projectiles.

At one point in his testimony, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone — who suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury and said he heard rioters threaten to “kill him with his own gun” — banged his hand on the witness table to accentuate how “disgraceful” it was that some Republican lawmakers were trying to make light of what he endured defending the Capitol.

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The officers said that despite being targeted by the mob, they tried to help the protesters who were injured in the attack. Dunn told of helping carry one woman to the Capitol office of House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), where she was administered CPR.

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Hear the profanity-laced voicemail that DC officer Michael Fanone got from a Trump supporter while he was testifying to Congress

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In November and early December, the focus of Trump’s efforts was pressuring state officials in places such as Arizona and Georgia to decline to certify results in favor of Biden, and pressing Attorney General William Barr to cast doubt on the results. But Barr declined, breaking with Trump, and so did pivotal Republicans including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. Once Barr was pushed aside, The Washington Post reported this week, Trump began a daily campaign to pressure Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen into doing what Barr would not, trying to place new claims of fraud before the Justice Department. Unbeknownst to Rosen, Trump was also orchestrating a plan to topple him.

What Trump hoped to achieve from these efforts has always been a little hazy. The Justice Department doesn’t certify elections, and at most could have pursued fraud claims in court—had there been any credible ones, which there were not. The new releases by the House Oversight Committee, first reported by The New York Times, connect the dots. Donoghue explained to Trump that the DOJ couldn’t overturn the result, but the president was unruffled.

“Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen” is how Donoghue recorded Trump’s response in handwritten notes.

All Trump wanted was some semi-independent arbiter to declare the election fraudulent—whether that was the governor of Arizona, the Georgia secretary of state, or the U.S. Justice Department. This much was clear even then, but Trump’s endgame was not. After all, Democrat Joe Biden’s lead was wide enough that a single state declining to certify or a single fraud case couldn’t have erased it. Trump, despite his weakness for conspiracy theories, understood that. But he didn’t need any of these officials to set aside the results on their own. He just needed enough ammunition, no matter how tenuous, that he could derail certification of the election in Congress.