The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2021 will reconvene Monday to scrutinize the conspiracy theories that led a group of Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the US Capitol.

The Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, has said the second hearing will focus on “the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power”.

“We’re going to take a close look at the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law, when he lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of January 6,” Thompson said on Thursday.

The select committee said ahead of the hearing that the panel would focus on how Trump embraced baseless claims of a stolen election starting on election night – when he falsely declared victory over Joe Biden – and seized upon those claims in the weeks that followed.

Trump was told repeatedly on election night that he did not have the numbers to win, the panel is expected to say, relying on live witness testimony from former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt.

The select committee will then show how Trump embraced election fraud claims despite being told otherwise by top officials, hearing from former US attorney BJay Pak, who resigned when he was told Trump would fire him for not pushing harder that fraud occurred in Georgia.

Trump had an obligation to make court challenges if he believed there was fraud, the panel will say, and also accept the decisions of the courts – he lost virtually every case – but he instead chose to attack the “rule of law”.

The select committee said it would also show how Trump and the Republican political apparatus used those baseless claims to rake in millions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans in fundraising, and how the Capitol attack was fueled by those claims perpetuated by Trump.

The hearing on Monday, which will last around two hours and see select committee member Zoe Lofgren take a lead role in questioning witnesses instead of committee counsel, comes four days after the panel held its first hearing in primetime.

At that first session, the select committee featured shocking and at times emotional testimony from key witnesses who have spoken to investigators over the past year as they conducted the first stage of their inquiry behind closed doors in Washington.

Members of Trump’s inner circle testified that the former president was repeatedly told his claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election that deprived him of victory over Democrat Joe Biden were entirely baseless, but he continued to spread those lies in the weeks leading up to the insurrection.

“I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit,” William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, told investigators in a clip shared on Thursday.

Last week’s hearing laid the groundwork for the committee’s argument that Trump played a central role in the planning of the insurrection and bears personal responsibility for the deadly attack. A mob overran the US Capitol on January 6 last year, the day that Congress was due to officially certify Biden’s win over Trump in the previous Novembers presidential election.

The five remaining hearings are expected to build upon that argument, as committee members attempt to present a meticulous case for Trump’s culpability.

“On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, said Thursday.

“Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power. In our hearings, you will see evidence of each element of this plan.”

The Monday hearing will provide committee members with another opportunity to convince the country that America’s democracy is facing a threat from those who do not believe in free and fair election.

The panel has accused Trump and his associates of having engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” and argues that the former president bears personal responsibility for the deadly attack on the US Capitol.

Although Trump was impeached by the House for inciting the insurrection, he was acquitted by the Senate, leaving many of his critics feeling as though he was not held accountable for his actions.

If the committee is successful in building its case against Trump, the hearings could deliver a devastating blow to the former president’s hopes of making a political comeback in the 2024 presidential election. But if Americans are unmoved by the committee’s findings, the country faces the specter of another attempted coup, Thompson warned.

“Our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over,” Thompson said on Thursday. “January 6 and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk. The world is watching what we do here.”

Hugo Lowell contributed to this report