WASHINGTON >> The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol laid out evidence Thursday that President Donald Trump was told that his plan to overturn the 2020 election was illegal, but he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with it anyway, ultimately whipping up a violent mob against him when he refused to comply.

In its third hearing this month laying out the findings of its investigation so far, the panel detailed the intense pressure campaign that Trump and conservative lawyer John Eastman waged against Pence to try to get him to overturn the election, which the panel says directly contributed to the violent siege of Congress.

Both men knew the plan was unlawful, according to testimony by Pence’s advisers, and ultimately, Eastman sought a pardon after the riot after being informed by one of Trump’s top White House lawyers that he had criminal exposure for hatching the scheme.

Trump’s closest advisers viewed his last-ditch efforts pressuring Pence to halt congressional certification of his 2020 election defeat as “nuts,” “crazy” and even likely to incite riots if Pence followed through, witnesses revealed in stark testimony Thursday.

Trump aides and allies warned bluntly in private about his efforts, even as some publicly continued to stand by the president’s false claims of election fraud. Nine people died in the insurrection and its aftermath.

“Are you out of your effing mind?” Eric Herschmann, a lawyer advising Trump, told Eastman in recorded testimony shown at the hearing.

“You’re going to turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that your theory is this is how you’re going to invalidate their votes?” Herschmann said. He warned: “You’re going to cause riots in the streets.”

He said Eastman had responded: “There’s been violence in the history of our country to protect the democracy or protect the republic.”

The committee has said Eastman’s plan was illegal, and a federal judge has said “more likely than not” Trump committed crimes in his attempt to stop the certification.

In a social media post Thursday, Trump decried the hearings anew as a “witch hunt,” lambasted coverage by “the Fake News Networks” and exclaimed, “I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!”

The panel also presented in chilling detail how Trump, knowing that rioters had violently stormed the Capitol with Pence inside, posted a tweet condemning his vice president for failing to reject the election results, sending Pence fleeing for his life just 40 feet away from the mob that was calling for his execution.

“Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but he could not bring himself to participate in the peaceful transfer of power, so he latched on to a scheme that, once again, he knew was illegal,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who led much of the session. “And when the vice president refused to go along, he unleashed a violent mob against him.”

The Proud Boys and other rioters, the committee said, would have killed Pence had they found him.

“He deserves to be burned with the rest of them,” one rioter is heard saying on video as the mob prepares to storm the iconic building.

“Pence betrayed us,” says another rioter, wearing a Make America Great Again hat in a selfie video inside the Capitol.

Although Pence took shelter in a secure location, he refused to be evacuated from the Capitol. Greg Jacob, Pence’s top White House lawyer, testified: “The vice president did not want the world to see the image of the vice president of the United States fleeing the Capitol.”

The committee also played video of Jacob testifying that Eastman had admitted in front of Trump two days before the riot that his plan to have Pence obstruct the electoral certification violated the law. Jacob said that Pence had described Eastman’s actions as those of someone in need of a “rubber room.”

The House panel has also asked Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for an interview, the panel’s chairman said Thursday afternoon.

Thomas, a conservative activist, communicated with people in Trump’s orbit ahead of the attack and also on the day of the insurrection, when hundreds of Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

“We have sent Ms. Thomas a letter, asking her to come and talk to the committee,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, told reporters after a three-hour public hearing Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Thompson and the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., had both said it was time for her to come in voluntarily and provide testimony with the nine-member panel after investigators discovered information that refers to Thomas — known as Ginni — in communications they have obtained relating to Eastman.

In response, Thomas told the conservative news site Daily Caller on Thursday that she “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions,” suggesting she would comply with a request to testify.

Retired conservative federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, who advised Pence to resist Trump’s effort to overturn the election, delivered strongly worded testimony in which he said that if the vice president had gone along, it would have been “tantamount to a revolution” and “the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic.” He also restated a warning he had articulated in an opinion piece in The New York Times: “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” he said.

Associated Press reporters Mary Clare Jalonick, Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.