(Bloomberg) — Bill Stepien, who served as manager of Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, will be among five witnesses appearing in person Monday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol.
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Monday’s hearing will be the second in a planned series by the panel, which intends to focus next on alleged evidence that Trump knew his claims of election fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden were not true. Stepien’s appearance was announced Sunday by the panel.
Stepien was described in a Nov. 8 subpoena letter by Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson as supervising a post-election shift in Trump’s campaign to focusing on “Stop the Steal” messaging and related fund-raising.
That messaging included promoting false claims related to voting machines, “despite an internal campaign memo in which campaign staff determined that such claims were false,” according to the letter.
Thompson also said Trump campaign officials “reportedly” urged state and party officials to affect the outcome of the November 2020 presidential election, including by asking states to delay or deny certification of electoral votes and sending alternate electoral slates to Congress.
Appearing with Stepien on the first of two witness panels will be Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News Political editor.
A second witness panel will include election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg; former Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt; and BJay Pak, a former US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Pak previously testified to senators and investigators on the Senate Judiciary Committee that he abruptly resigned as US Attorney on Jan. 4, 2021 after Justice Department officials told him Trump was preparing to fire him for not pushing harder on the claim that widespread voter fraud occurred in Georgia.
“So my perspective was that the President did not want to believe what I reported up,” a transcript of Pak’s three hours of questioning dated Aug. 11 shows he testified. “So if the President thought that I was being ineffective, there was really no reason for me to continue in the role, although I disagree maybe in his ultimate conclusion on that.”
Pak also testified he was upset by news that Trump had called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger two days earlier, on Jan. 2, 2021, to push him to find exactly enough votes to overturn the election results in Georgia.
He told the Senate panel “I was very upset, at the same time very disappointed because the call — the summary of the description about the call — indicated that despite at least me and also the attorney general reporting up that there had not been widespread fraud, that the President was seeking to overturn the election or at least find ballots or represent that there was irregularities.”
“So I was personally very concerned.”
(Adds more excerpts from Stepien subpoena letter in fourth paragraph, previous BJay Pak testimony in eighth.)
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