Jan. 6 hearings: Watch Monday's congressional hearing live

The House Select Committee on Jan. 6 held its second public hearing Monday, which featured testimony from then-President Trump’s campaign aides and lawyers who said the president ignored their advice on Election Day and proceeded to push election fraud conspiracies that had no factual basis.

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., declared during her opening statement that Trump ignored the advice of his campaign team on election night to instead rely on an "apparently inebriated" Rudy Giuliani, his former personal lawyer.

"Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani, to just claim that he won," Cheney said.

"The Trump campaign legal team knew there was no legitimate argument – fraud irregularities or anything to overturn the election, and yet President Trump went ahead with his plans for Jan. 6 anyway," she said.

Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday after the hearing that both he and the Jan. 6 Department of Justice prosecutors will be watching the hearings and "at this point, this investigation is proceeding according to facts and the law. We are not obstructed from continuing our investigation in any way." 

Read more by Fox News' Jessica Chasmar: Jan. 6 hearing: Testimony focused on Trump's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud

Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., gave her closing remarks Monday afternoon, saying the rejection of President Trump's litigation efforts regarding alleged 2020 election fraud was “overwhelming.”

“Twenty-two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself, and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges dismissed the president's claims,” she said.

“At least 11 lawyers have been referred for disciplinary proceedings due to bad faith and baseless efforts to undermine the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” she continued.

“President Trump continued to push the stolen election narrative, even though he and his allies knew that their litigation efforts making the same claim had failed,” she added. “It’s worth pointing out that litigation generally does not continue past the ‘safe harbor’ date of December 14th. But the fact that this litigation went on, well, that decision makes more sense when you consider the Trump campaign’s fundraising tactics, because if the litigation had stopped on December 14th, there would have been no fight to defend the election and no clear path to continue to raise millions of dollars.”

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said then-President Trump’s focus on an alleged discrepancy between the number of absentee ballots issued and the number of absentee ballots cast was comparing apples to oranges.

Shortly after the election, Rudy Giuliani alleged the discrepancy signaled voter fraud in Pennsylvania, but he used statistics from the state’s June primary instead of the general election. Pennsylvania Republican state Senator Doug Mastriano shared a similar version of the claim on Twitter that also confused primary data and data from the general election, the Associated Press reported.

“The problem is that Mastriano threw out this number and what he did was he mixed apples and oranges,” Barr testified. “He took the number of applications for the Republican primary and he compared it to the number of absentee votes cast in the general election. But once you actually go and look and compare apples to apples, there's no discrepancy at all."

“I think at some point I covered that with the president,” he added.

Former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJay Pak, who resigned from his position during then-President Trump’s efforts to find voter fraud in the state, said during testimony Monday that the Trump campaign’s allegations of there being a “suitcase full of ballots” were “false.”

Pak said Rudy Giuliani asked him to make it a priority to get to investigate surveillance footage in Fulton County purporting to show suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables after poll watchers were told to leave. Pak said it was not a suitcase but a ballot box, and that the video was misleadingly edited now to show that the poll watchers had later been told to stay and continue counting.

“We found that the suitcase full of ballots, the alleged black suitcase that was being seen pulled from under the table was actually an official lockbox where ballots were kept safe,” he said. “We found out that there was a … misunderstanding that they were done counting ballots or tallying ballots for the night, and the partisan watchers that were assigned by each of the respective parties were announced to send home. Well, once they realized the mistake, someone from the secretary of state's office had indicated that, ‘No, no, no, we're not done for the night. You need to go ahead and continue counting.’ So once they packed up the lockbox full of ballots, they brought back the official ballot box again and continue to tally the ballots from that lockbox.”

“Unfortunately, during the Senate hearing, Mr. Giuliani only played a clip that showed them pulling out the official ballot box from under the table and referring to that as a smoking gun of fraud in Fulton County,” he continued. “We interviewed the FBI, interviewed the individuals that are depicted in the videos … and determined that nothing irregular happen in the county. And the allegations made by Mr. Giuliani were false.”

Former Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller said Rudy Giuliani “was definitely intoxicated” when he advised then-President Trump to declare victory on Election night. 

“The mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president, for example,” Miller said in videotaped testimony aired at the hearing. “I think, effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying we won it, they're stealing it from us, where did all the votes come from, we need to go say that we won, and essentially that anyone who didn't agree with that position was being weak.”

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, said during her opening remarks that Giuliani was “apparently inebriated” on the night of the 2020 election and that Trump chose his advice over his campaign team, who said it was too early to make the call.

“ The general consensus was that the law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making, said Matthew Morgan, chief lawyer of Trump’s campaign. “I seem to recall that I had a similar conversation with most all of them.”

Former Attorney General Bill Barr recalled a meeting with then-President Trump on Dec. 14, the same day Barr resigned, in which Barr said he reiterated there was no evidence of election fraud, including among Dominion voting machines.

“I reiterated that they wasted a whole month on these claims, on the Dominion voting machines, and they were idiotic claims,” he said. “And I told them that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that and was doing great, grave disservice to the country.”

“I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with, he's become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,’” he continued. “And on the other hand, you know, when I went into this and would you know, tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”

"I felt that before the election it was possible to talk sense to the president," he added. "And while you sometimes had to engage in, you know, big wrestling match with him and that it was possible to keep things on track. But I always felt that after the election he didn't seem to be listening and I didn't think it was, you know, that I was inclined not to stay around if he wasn't listening to advice from me or his other cabinet secretaries."

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said he knew immediately following the election that former President Trump’s claims of fraud were 'bulls---.'

“Right out of the box, on election night the president claimed that there was major fraud underway,” he said. “I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential evidence. And it seemed to be based on the dynamic that at the end of the evening a lot of Democratic votes came in, which changed the vote counts in certain states. And that seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud."

“I didn't think much of that, because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night,” he continued.

Barr said he made it clear with Trump that he did not agree with his early election fraud claims.

“I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bulls---,” Barr said. “And, you know, I didn't want to be a part of it. And that's one of the reasons that went into me deciding to leave when I did.”

Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said during her opening statement that the committee will prove Trump’s election fraud claims were false and that his “lie” bilked millions of dollars out of his supporters.

“We’ll also show that the Trump campaign used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts,” she said. “But the Trump campaign didn't use the money for that. The big lie was also a big rip off.”

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said during his opening statement that President Trump “lit the fuse” that led to the Jan. 6. storming of the U.S. Capitol.

“He betrayed the trust of the American people," Thompson said. "He ignored the will of the voters. He lied to his supporters and the country, and he tried to remain in office after the people voted him out. And the courts upheld the will of the people."

"This morning, we'll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election, and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy – an attack on the American people by trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy, and in doing so, lit the fuse that led to the horrific violence of January 6th when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol sent by Donald Trump to stop the transfer of power."

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., during her opening statement outlined what today's testimony would include regarding "the big lie."

“Today, you will hear much more from a former Attorney General Bill Barr's recorded testimony, and you will hear in greater detail what others in the department told President Trump that his claims of election fraud were nonsense," she said. "You will also hear much more from President Trump's own campaign experts who had also concluded that his fraud claims could not be supported.

"The Trump campaign legal team knew there was no legitimate argument – fraud irregularities or anything to overturn the election, and yet President Trump went ahead with his plans for Jan. 6 anyway.” 

Cheney also said Trump ignored the advice of his campaign team on election night to instead rely on an "apparently inebriated" Rudy Giuliani, his former lawyer.

“Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani, to just claim that he won," she said.

Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien will not testify before the House Select Committee on January 6 due to a "family emergency," the committee announced Monday.

Stepien was originally expected to be the star witness of Monday's hearing. The event will be the committee's second public hearing, having kicked off with last week's primetime hearing.

The hearing was delayed roughly 45 minutes from its 10 a.m. ET start time due to Stepien's absence.

Click here to read more on Fox News: Bill Stepien skips testimony before January 6 Committee, cites 'family emergency'

Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said former President Donald Trump is "politically" and "morally" but not criminally responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.

During an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," Hutchinson said the Jan. 6 select committee's investigation into the attack is an "important review" of what happened that day, and that Trump bears some responsibility. But the committee "has a long way to go" if it wants to establish criminal liability.

"I've always said we need to do this. This isn’t the most bipartisan effort in it, but it is a review that is important," Hutchinson said. "Now the whole premise of the hearing is that President Trump is criminally responsible, and that's the case they're trying to make. As Bill Barr has said, I think that is a heavy lift. I don't see the factual basis for that."

Click here to read more on Fox News: GOP Gov. Hutchinson says Trump responsible for Jan. 6 ‘politically, morally’ but not criminally

Host Mark Levin of "Life, Liberty & Levin" slammed the Jan. 6 "sham" hearings on his show over the weekend, calling it an "abomination" to the U.S. political system.

He also said the hearings were driven by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her party's hatred of former President Donald Trump.

"This is a sham," Levin monologued. "This will go down in history as a dark mark on the American political system."

"We can’t see it now, [but] the mob is in control, the mob runs the media, the propaganda is full-throated, you can’t see it now but history has a way of sobering events. And we will see this one day as the outrageous attack on our system, on the prior president, on scores of people that it truly is," he added.

"It’s an abomination to the American system, not just of justice but our congressional and representative system."

Two panels of witnesses will testify on Monday, including Donald Trump's former campaign manager and a pair of U.S. attorneys.

The first panel will include: Former Trump campaign manager William Stepien and former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt.

The second panel will include: Election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJay Pak and former City Commissioner of Philadelphia Al Schmidt.

There will be a 10 minute recess between the two panel testimonies.

An aid to the Jan. 6 Select Committee told Fox News that Monday's hearing will be heavily focused on "the big lie."

The aid said the members are expected to ask about Trump's decision "to ignore the voters and declare victory on an election that he lost, spread claims of fraud and then decide to ignore the rulings of the courts."

During a segment of "Sunday Night in America," host Trey Gowdy called on the Jan. 6 committee to allow cross-examination of the witnesses who made allegations against former President Trump last Thursday, arguing that it is the only way to get the "whole truth" about the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

"I watched the Jan. 6 congressional hearing. Three allegations caught my attention," Gowdy started the segment.

"Number one, that former President Trump knew he lost the 2016 election but said otherwise," he said.

"Number two, that former President Trump knew there was no fraud sufficient to change the outcome."

"And number three, that the former president was sympathetic to the cries to do Mike Pence harm," Gowdy added. "Those are serious allegations deserving of the truth."

He concluded: "The question is how do we find it? Who are the witnesses supporting these allegations? Who said the former president knew he lost… who said the former president knew there was significant fraud… is the witness credible? Is the witness biased for or against the former president? Were others present? Is there corroboration?"

Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., closed Thursday’s two-hour-long hearing with comments about former President Donald Trump and those individuals who stormed the Capitol. He also shared the committee's agenda for Monday. 

The chairman said that the committee will reconvene to “examine the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol, to try to stop the transfer of power.” 

“We’re going to take a close look at the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law, when he hit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of January 6, without objection,” Thompson added. 

Click here for Thursday's coverage of the first public hearing.