Watch: Trump fraud claims ‘like playing whack-a-mole’, former Attorney General Barr says

Donald Trump’s closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of Jan. 6, but the defeated president was becoming “detached from reality” and clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, the committee investigating the Capitol attack was told Monday.

Watch Barr’s remarks in the player above.

The committee played video testimony from former Attorney General William Barr who told lawmakers that dealing with former President Trump’s allegations of election fraud were “like playing Whac-a-Mole,” adding that the claims were “bogus,” “idiotic” and “bull–.”

“He was becoming detached from reality,” said Barr.

READ MORE: Who is Bill Barr and why is he important to the Jan. 6 hearings?

The former attorney general, who also testified in last week’s blockbuster hearing, said that Trump was “as mad as I’d ever seen him” when the attorney general explained that the Justice Department would not take sides in the election.

The committee brought forth witnesses to show that the back-and-forth kept up in the months that followed.

Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue recalled breaking down one claim after another – from a truckload of ballots in Pennsylvania to a missing suitcase of ballots in Georgia — and telling Trump “much of the info you’re getting is false.”

The witnesses appeared before the House committee as the panel focused on the “big lie,” Trump’s false claims of voter fraud that fueled the defeated Republican president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and provoked a mob of his supporters to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol.

Nine people died in the riot and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by police. More than 800 people have been arrested in the siege, and members of two extremist groups have been indicted on rare sedition charges over their roles leading the charge into the Capitol.

Additional evidence is to be released in hearings this week focusing on Trump’s decision to ignore the outcome of the election and the court cases that ruled against him, and beckon supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 to overturn Biden’s victory as Congress was set to certify the Electoral College results..

The committee has said most of those interviewed in the investigation are coming forward voluntarily, although some have demanded subpoenas to appear in public.