During its June 13 hearing, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack shared edited video testimony by Bill Stepien, former campaign manager for former President Donald Trump, as well as from Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller. Their testimony laid out the atmosphere in the White House as the votes were counted on election night.
Stepien had been scheduled to testify in person, but did not attend because his wife went into labor. In the video, he said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also sat for a taped deposition, spoke to Trump as election results came back late into the night. Miller said Giuliani suggested the Trump campaign declare victory on election night.
“Effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying that ‘we won it, they are stealing it from us, where did all the votes come from? We need to say that we won,’ Miller said. “And essentially that anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.”
The hearing was the second of several planned by the Jan. 6 committee that focused on how Trump actively spread false information about the 2020 election outcome – what has become known as the “big lie” – in the run up to the Jan. 6 insurrection. In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day.
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