Former Trump campaign manager William Stepien will not appear Monday as scheduled before the House Jan. 6 Committee, the panel announced shortly before the hearing was slated to begin.
Mr. Stepien’s absence is due to a family emergency, the committee said.
Several outlets reported that Mr. Stepien’s wife went into labor early Monday morning.
His counsel will appear before the committee with a statement for the record.
Mr. Stepien was slated to be a key witness in Monday’s hearing, in which committee aides said the panel will focus on former President Trump’s decision to claim victory on election night in November 2020 “despite sound advice that he didn’t have the numbers to win,” and his decision to “embrace false claims that the election was tainted by widespread fraud” in the days following the election.
Monday’s hearing follows Thursday’s prime-time debut of a series of hearings this month.
The committee subpoenaed Mr. Stepien in November, alleging that he “supervised the conversion of the Trump presidential campaign to an effort focused on the ‘Stop the Steal’ messaging and related fundraising.”
The panel also alleges that, under Mr. Stepien’s guidance, the Trump campaign “urged state and party officials” to delay the certification of the November 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Stepien is currently working as an adviser to the campaign of Republican Harriet Hageman in her effort to oust Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican, in the state’s August GOP primary. Ms. Cheney is the vice chairwoman of the House Jan. 6 committee and a foe of Mr. Trump.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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