Bill Stepien is expected to appear alongside a fired Fox News editor who called Trump’s loss and a former U.S. attorney who resigned rather than go along with false claims of election fraud.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol plans to use the testimony of former President Donald J. Trump’s own campaign manager against him on Monday as it lays out evidence that Mr. Trump knowingly spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him in an attempt to overturn his defeat. The committee plans to call Bill Stepien, the final chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, who is expected to be asked to detail what the campaign and the former president himself knew about his fictitious claims of widespread election fraud. Those claims will be the focus of the second in a series of hearings the panel is holding this month to reveal the findings of its sprawling investigation. After an explosive first hearing last week in prime time, leaders of the committee are aiming to keep up a steady stream of revelations about the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the election and how it sowed the seeds of the violent siege of the Capitol by his supporters last year. On Monday, they plan to describe the origin and spread of Mr. Trump’s election lies, including the former president’s refusal to listen to advisers who told him that he had lost and that there was no evidence of widespread irregularities that could change the outcome. Then they plan on demonstrating the chaos those falsehoods caused throughout several states, ultimately resulting in the riot. A second panel of witnesses will include Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who resigned abruptly after refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia. According to an internal memo made public as part of a court case, the Trump campaign knew as early as November that its outlandish fraud claims were false. Last week, the panel showed videotaped testimony of his top advisers and even the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, saying that they had told Mr. Trump and top White House officials as much. Mr. Stepien was present for key conversations about what the data showed about Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding in an effort to win swing states, beginning on election night.
