The committee intends to summon Bill Stepien, the last president of Mr. Trump’s campaign, who is expected to be called in to clarify what the campaign and the former president himself knew about his fictitious allegations of widespread electoral fraud. These allegations will be the focus of the second in a series of hearings the commission is holding this month to reveal the findings of its extensive investigation. After an explosive first hearing last week in prime time, committee leaders aim to maintain a steady stream of revelations about the magnitude of Mr Trump’s plot to overthrow the election and how he sowed the seeds of the Capitol’s violent siege. supporters of last year. On Monday, they plan to describe the origins and spread of lies about Mr. Trump’s election, including the former president’s refusal to listen to advisers who told him he had lost and that there was no evidence of widespread irregularities that could change the result. They then plan to show the chaos caused by these lies in many states, eventually leading to the uprising. An aide to the commission said the commission would focus heavily on Mr. Trump’s decision on election night to declare victory, even though he had been told he did not have the numbers to win. A second group of witnesses will include Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned after refusing to say widespread voter fraud in Georgia. According to an internal memo released as part of a lawsuit, Trump’s campaign had known since November that its bizarre allegations of fraud were false. Last week, the panel showed a videotaped testimony of its top advisers, including then-Attorney General William P. Barr, saying they had told Mr. Trump and senior White House officials. Mr. Stepien was present at keynote talks on what the evidence showed about Mr. Trump’s chances of success in trying to win swing states, starting on election night. He was part of a meeting with Mr. Trump on November 7, 2020, shortly after the announcement of the election by the television networks in favor of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in which he told Mr. Trump the extremely low chance of success with his challenges. . Mr. Trump, motivated by his lawyer, Rudolf W. Giuliani, wanted to move on anyway. Mr. Stepien, who rarely speaks in public, appears summoned, raising questions about how willing he will be to testify against Mr. Trump. Mr. Stepien is currently serving as an adviser to Harriet Hageman, a Trump-backed Republican who poses a major challenge to Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and committee vice-chair, creating a potential counterpart. for Monday’s interrogation.
Read more about the hearings of the Parliamentary Committee on January 6
The committee on 6 January suggested in a letter to Mr Stepien that he had evidence that he knew the campaign was raising money by making false allegations of electoral fraud. “As administrator of the Trump 2020 re-election campaign, you oversaw all aspects of the campaign,” the letter said. “You then oversaw the transformation of the Trump presidential campaign into an effort to stop ‘stealing’ messages and raising funds. “This message included promoting some false allegations related to voting machines, rather than an internal campaign note in which campaign staff considered such allegations to be false.” Mr Stepien will appear alongside Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor at Fox News, who was fired after Fox correctly called Mr Biden a candidate for the 2020 Arizona presidential election, a move that has angered Mr Trump. The second part of the hearing will focus on the repercussions of Mr. Trump’s false allegations across the country, especially in competing states. Along with Mr. Pack, who resigned after learning that Trump wanted to fire him for rejecting allegations of uncontrolled voter fraud in Georgia, the commission plans to hear from Al Schmidt, a former Republican commissioner in Philadelphia. also resisted Mr. Trump’s lies. Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer who served as a national adviser to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign and played a key role in the 2000 Florida count, is also expected to appear. Monday’s panel of witnesses suggests the commission wants to record the impact of Mr. Trump’s lies on the conservative media and various states, as well as contrast the unfounded nature of Mr. Trump’s allegations with legitimate legal challenges. from the republican campaigns of the past. An aide to the commission said the commission would present evidence during the hearing from witnesses who had investigated Mr. Trump’s allegations of fraud and found them to be false. The panel also plans to show how Mr. Trump’s fiction about stolen elections was used as a fundraising tool, generating hundreds of millions of dollars between Election Day 2020 and January 6. A fraudulent fundraising attempt could lead to a possible criminal referral to the Justice Department against Mr. Trump and his allies. And some in the commission have long believed that one way they could pass on to Trump’s supporters was to prove to them that they had been tricked into donating their money to a fake cause. Aides said the commission would also try on Monday to show how the rioters who stormed the Capitol echoed Trump’s words and cited him as a motive for invading the building in an effort to prevent Congress from formalizing his defeat. . California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chairwoman of the House of Representatives and chairwoman of the House of Representatives, is expected to play a key role in presenting evidence at the hearing, aides said. Time and time again, senior Trump administration officials have told Trump that he lost the 2020 election. But repeatedly, Mr. Trump has pushed forward with his lies for widespread fraud. Shortly after the election, as the ballots were still being counted, Trump’s top data expert on the re-election campaign told him bluntly that he was going to lose. In the weeks that followed, as Mr. Trump continued to insist on winning, a senior Justice Department official repeatedly told him that his allegations of widespread electoral fraud were unfounded, warning him that they would “hit the country.” These concerns were echoed by the White House’s top lawyer, who told the president he would enter into a “murder-suicide pact” if he continued to pursue extremist plans to try to overturn the 2020 election results. Last week, the Jan. 6 panel released a video of an interview that showed Mr. Barr testifying that he knew the president’s allegations were false, and told him three times. “I told the president it was bullshit,” Barr was quoted as saying. “I did not want to be part of it.” The committee members previewed some of the elements they plan to present at Monday’s hearing during a televised interview on Sunday. “A lot of people said to former President Trump – it should have been absolutely clear – that there was no evidence that the election was rigged, and he ignored it,” said Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat and commissioner. on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger’s spokesman brought a contrast between those close to Mr. Trump who told him the truth and “yes” who encouraged his imagination to steal elections to please him. “If you really believe the election was rigged, then if the president really believed it, he is not mentally fit to be president,” Kinsinger told CBS’s “Face The Nation,” adding: “I don’t think he believed it. . I think the people around him did not believe it. “It’s all about maintaining power against the will of the American people.” Michael S. Schmidt contributed to the report.
