THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Prosecutors would have a hard time proving that Trump was engaging in a crime if he truly believed that there was actual fraud in Georgia, lawyers told The Daily Beast.

But in recent weeks, the Jan. 6 Committee's half-dozen hearings have laid that to rest, playing video testimony from Trump advisers who recalled telling the commander-in-chief that the conspiracy theories were baseless.

"I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public were--was--bullshit, that the claims of fraud were bullshit. And, you know, he was indignant about that," Barr told congressional investigators under oath in a videotaped deposition shared by the committee last month.

"I told him that it was crazy stuff, and they were wasting their time on that, and it was doing a grave disservice to the country," Trump's former AG added.

That testimony will be pivotal to the grand jury, said Adam Kaufmann, a white-collar defense lawyer who was previously a Manhattan prosecutor.

"Trump is going to cloak himself in that he believed he was right. What's going to be really important is what his advisers were saying to him at the time," Kaufmann said. "The Fulton County D.A. is now able to put in front of that grand jury the Attorney General of the United States saying, 'No, Mr. President, we investigated and there was no fraud.'"

"It makes it a lot easier," he said.

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