In another stark sign of the legal jeopardy Giuliani and Eastman face, recent House committee hearings into the attack on the Capitol offered evidence that both lawyers sought pardons from Trump, presumably tied to plotting strategies to block Biden's certification by Congress on 6 January, and fiery speeches they gave along with Trump at a rally on the Ellipse before a mob of his allies attacked the Capitol.

The legal threats facing Clark were underscored at a 23 June panel hearing by scathing testimony from former top justice officials about Trump's plotting with Clark to elevate him to acting attorney general to push the fake electors scheme by falsely claiming in a proposed letter to Georgia officials that the department had "significant concern" about election fraud there and in other states.

The former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue was scalding as he detailed Trump's efforts to replace the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, with Clark in late December 2020, and to pressure state legislators to reject Biden electors by promoting baseless charges of widespread fraud.

Donoghue recounted how he warned Trump at a bizarre 3 January White House meeting - that was attended by Rosen, Trump counsel Pat Cipollone and other top lawyers - that elevating Clark to be acting AG would spark mass resignations, and Clark would be "left leading a graveyard", at the department. Cipollone, who was recently subpoenaed by the House panel, also threatened to resign if Clark replaced Rosen.

Further, according to shocking testimony on 28 June by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to the ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cipollone warned her early on 6 January of potential criminal liability for Trump and others if Trump went to the Capitol as he had discussed doing, and asked Hutchinson to "please make sure we don't go up to the Capitol".

All of it adds up to potentially grave consequences for the three lawyers.

Michael Zeldin, an ex-DoJ prosecutor, said: "The strong evidence presented about the fake electors scheme at recent House committee hearings, including testimony by senior justice department officials, laid the foundation for charging Trump's legal advisers, Eastman and Giuliani, and possibly Clark, with multiple state and federal crimes including obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, false statements in connection with the fake electors scheme, and election fraud."

He added: "The cumulative evidence presented over the course of the hearings paint a picture of a president who was told explicitly by multiple people that he lost the election and that once he exhausted his judicial remedies (losing nearly 60 cases) his continuing pressure campaign to prevent the orderly transfer of power was illegal.

"Yet Trump and his attorneys persisted."

Other ex-prosecutors stress that the FBI raids to obtain Clark and Eastman's phones indicate the investigations of the two lawyers have escalated.

"Search warrants of Clark and Eastman's phones means that a judge found probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime would be found on each of those devices," Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, told the Guardian.