Ironically, tomorrow’s hearing looks like one Fox News would much prefer to miss. We have more info and live streaming after the jump. UPDATED
Fox's Howard Kurtz announced on Media Buzz this morning that Fox will cover tomorrow’s hearing. It will be interesting to see how the network's prime time brigade spins what promises to be a very uncomfortable-for-them session.
The Washington Post reports that the focus of tomorrow’s hearing is Trump’s “dereliction of duty.”
[Rep. Elaine] Luria, who will lead Monday’s hearing, said the bipartisan panel has interviewed 1,000 witnesses and pieced together “a very comprehensive ticktock timeline” of what Trump did as the attack on the Capitol was unfolding.
“I think it’d be more clear to describe it as what he was not doing,” Luria said. “[For] 187 minutes, you know, this man had the microphone; he could speak to the whole country. His duty was to stand up and say something and try to stop this. So, we’ll talk about that and what I see to be his dereliction of duty, and he had a duty to act.”
But the witness list suggests that the focus will go beyond Trump’s actions on January 6.
According to The Hill, the witness list for tomorrow includes Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News politics editor who was fired in a purge not long after the network enraged MAGA world for its early, yet proven correct call that Joe Biden had won the state of Arizona in the 2020 election.
Also slated to testify: former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, now working to elect committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney’s primary opponent. Presumably Stepien will be there pursuant to a subpoena but it will be verrryyy interesting to hear what he has to say, under oath, about his former boss.
Also on hand, former Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt. He’s a Republican who defended the 2020 election and resigned after getting barraged by attacks from Trump and threats from Trump supporters.
Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJay Pak is also scheduled to testify. He resigned two days after Trump pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to change the results of the election, CNN reported. Pak reportedly said he resigned because he had heard Trump was going to fire him.
Conservative election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg will round out the list. The Hill notes, “Ginsberg was previously a co-chair of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration, a bipartisan group that works to improve election administration. He’s also written op-eds in newspapers criticizing claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, including in the New York Times.”
You can watch the hearing below, starting at June 13th, 10 AM. Feel free to share thoughts and observations underneath.
(Cheney image via screen grab)
6/13/22 Update: Bill Stepien will not appear at today's hearing. His wife reportedly went into labor. His attorney will appear instead.
6/14/22 Update: Post clarified to note that it was the state of Arizona that Stirewalt and Fox called early in the 2020 election.
UPDATE: Have now watched the proceeding care of the nice folks at UToob. My golly, they are going about this in an unrelenting, meticulously organised way. Both Stirewalt and Stepian were surprisingly blunt.
