(PatriotWise.com)- One of the people called to testify in Monday’s January 6 hearing said over the weekend that he would not be able to attend. Citing a family emergency, William Stepien, former Trump campaign manager said he would miss Monday’s hearing.
Stepien canceled his scheduled appearance at Monday’s meeting after his wife went into labor.
Monday’s hearing focused on former President Trump’s efforts to “overturn” the results of the 2020 election and his insistence that he lost as a result of widespread voter fraud.
The witnesses who appeared on Monday were Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, former Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt, and former US attorney for Atlanta, Byung Pak who resigned after he heard Trump planned to fire him for refusing to investigate claims of voter fraud.
Monday’s hearing also featured former Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt who defended his decision to call Arizona for Biden on election night. That call was believed to be the first signal that the presidential race was tilting away from Trump toward Biden.
Stirewalt, who was fired from Fox News in January 2021, told the committee that former President Trump would have been better off “playing Powerball” than expecting enough recounts would flip states from Biden to him.
Stirewalt defended the process Fox News had in place, saying those in charge of calling elections were very confident that the Arizona call was the right one. He said the Fox Decision Desk has “a better system and we had a great team.”
When it was clear that it was time to call Arizona, Stirewalt told the committee that his boss Bill Sammon suggested that no call be made until everyone in the room agreed. Stirewalt told the committee that they all knew how consequential calling Arizona would be because it was one of the five states that everyone was watching.
Stirewalt said that the Fox team “already knew” that Donald Trump’s chances for reelection “were smaller and getting smaller based on what we had seen.”
He told the committee that in the states Trump was demanding recounts, the margins of Biden’s victory made it virtually impossible for the recounts to sway the races away from Biden to Trump.
