US government lawyers threatened to quit en masse as then-President Donald Trump hounded them almost daily to help overturn his 2020 election defeat, a congressional inquiry has heard. Justice department officials said they told Mr Trump there was zero evidence for his claims of mass voter fraud. The attorneys also testified that the president’s plan to reverse his loss in key states was “a murder-suicide pact”. The panel is investigating last year’s US Capitol riot as an attempted coup. The House of Representatives select committee is seeking to build a case that Mr Trump’s efforts to stay in power in the lead-up to the violent raid by a horde of his supporters on Congress on 6 January 2021 amounted to illegal conduct. Mr Trump, a Republican, has described the inquiry as a “kangaroo court” designed to distract Americans from the “disaster” of Democratic-led governance and spiralling inflation ahead of November’s mid-term elections.(BBC)…[+]