June 12, 2022

Former Trump Campaign Manager Poised to Testify to January 6 Committee

Bill Stepien will be in the spotlight during the second congressional hearing on the insurrection.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Eric Trump, and campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign Bill Stepien, listen as President Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters during a campaign stop. Evan Vucci/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Bill Stepien invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than comply with a legislative subpoena to testify about Bridgegate, the 2013 scandal in which staffers and political appointees of New Jersey’s GOP Governor Chris Christie closed down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge to tie up traffic and punish a Democratic political rival. Now, the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has subpoenaed Stepien, who is scheduled to testify on Monday, though it’s unclear how cooperative a witness he may be. 

Christie, for whom Stepien worked as a campaign manager, told the New York Times in 2020 when Trump hired Stepien to replace Brad Parscale as campaign manager that Stepien “is a guy who is, in my experience with him, allergic to press attention, or public attention of any kind really.” 

Nonetheless, Stepien was smack in the middle of the Trump campaign machinations on election night in November 2020, and members of Congress are likely keen to hear about what went on inside the White House that night. Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Phillip Bump reported in their book I Alone Can Fix It that as the election returns rolled in, Stepien cautioned Trump that the early returns may look favorable, but that there would still be mail-in ballots to be counted that might favor Biden, and that the margins could shrink considerably, something Trump apparently didn’t want to hear. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to Leonnig and Bump, urged Stepien to “just say we won,” regardless of what the vote tally in various states turned out to be. 

The House committee kicked off anticipated hearings on Thursday with a prime-time performance that garnered more than 20 million viewers. Six more days of testimony are scheduled, starting Monday with Stepian and Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor. Stirewalt was part of the team that made Fox the first network to declare that Joe Biden had won the state of Arizona, a decision that Trump viewed as premature and left him apoplectic. Fox fired Stirewalt in January 2021 after the pro-Trump  “stop the steal” frenzy had created a backlash against the network for correctly calling the hotly contested swing state for Biden.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate