Former President Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election by installing a loyalist at the top of the Justice Department would have led to mass resignations at the agency and, ultimately, sparked an unprecedented constitutional crisis, former department leaders testified Thursday on Capitol Hill.

Appearing before the House panel investigating last year’s attack on the Capitol, the former officials — acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel, then head of the Office of Legal Counsel  — described weeks of chaos inside the Trump White House as the president scrambled to reverse his electoral defeat and grew ever more frustrated they wouldn’t help him to do it. 

In a crescendo of desperation leading up to Jan. 6, they testified, Trump pressed them to investigate a series of sensational fraud allegations — all of them examined and debunked — and when they refused to endorse his false claims of a stolen election, he tried to promote someone who would.