By Jeremy Herb, Zachary Cohen and Annie Grayer, CNN
The anticipated testimony of former President Donald Trump‘s campaign manager Bill Stepien before the House January 6 committee was unexpectedly upended Monday when Stepien said he couldn’t appear due to a family emergency.
The development is “disruptive” to Monday’s hearing, a source familiar with the committee’s plans said, but the panel has been prepared for such contingencies and has at its disposal deposition video clips from Stepien’s earlier testimony.
Monday’s hearing, the House January 6 committee‘s second this month, will focus on Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
House select committee aides said the hearing would scrutinize how Trump embraced false claims of fraud in the 2020 election and how he decided to declare victory in the hours after the election, even though he was told that the numbers didn’t bear it out.
Aides said that the hearing would show how Trump’s team pursued legal challenges in court and lost those cases, and that Trump then chose to ignore the will of the courts and continued to try to overturn the election.
The hearing will also seek to connect Trump’s lies about the election to the violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, aides said, including how rioters echoed the former President’s baseless allegations that the election was being stolen.
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