A bipartisan House select committee on Monday is about to start detailing the initial findings from its investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, keeping its focus squarely on former President Donald Trump.
The second hearing will center on the push by Trump and his allies to spread false claims of sweeping election fraud following the then-president’s loss to Joe Biden within the 2020 contest. The committee said it would show that Trump knew he lost the race, but nevertheless worked to falsely persuade “huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election from him,” Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said last week.
Witnesses are set to testify on two panels during Monday’s hearing. The primary will feature Chris Stirewalt, the previous Fox News political editor who got here under fire from Trump’s supporters after Fox called Arizona for Biden before other outlets on Election Day 2020.
Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien was slated to talk, as well — but lower than an hour before the hearing was set to start out at 10 a.m. ET, the committee announced that Stepien wouldn’t attend “resulting from a family emergency.”
Stepien’s lawyer will appear and make an announcement on his behalf, the committee said, adding that the event can be delayed by about 30 to 45 minutes consequently. Stepien is reportedly currently advising Cheney’s Trump-endorsed Republican primary challenger Harriet Hageman.
The second panel is about to incorporate testimony from election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg, former Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt and BJay Pak, former U.S. attorney for the northern district of Georgia.
(The hearing is slated to start out around 10:30 a.m. ET. Please refresh the page if the video above doesn’t play.)