Former United States President Donald Trump is seen on video during a U.S. House Select Committee hearing to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Capitol Hill in Washington, USA. on June 9, 2022.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
A former Fox News political editor who was fired by the cable network last year said Friday that he will testify on Monday at the next select committee hearing in the House on the Jan. 6 pro-Trump riot at the Capitol.
Chris Stirewalt made the announcement on the cable network NewsNation, where he is the political editor. He said he could not argue what the witness would be about.
His announcement came in the morning after the committee’s first public hearing on the January 6, 2021, uprising, when hundreds of supporters of then-President Donald Trump entered through doors and windows to invade the Capitol and delay the congressional confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
The next hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. ET on Monday and there are five more hearings scheduled after that. Fox News did not broadcast the hearing live on Thursday night as other news and broadcast networks did. Instead, Fox aired two hours of non-commercial programming from right-wing commentators Tucker Carlson, who dismissed the audience as “propaganda” and Sean Hannity.
While Fox News aired live footage of the hearing, Carlson and others talked about it, and the camera often focused on the audience rather than the footage of the Capitol attack. During the hearing, the committee showed Hannity texts to then-White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany describing a “playbook” for Trump after the riots.
Stirewalt was criticized by Trump and his supporters after the Fox News political panel was the first to call Arizona for Biden in November 2020. The state had a recent voting history for Republican presidential candidates, so the call shocked the political world and everyone. but he confirmed that Trump would lose the 2020 election.
Stirewalt was fired in January 2021. Rupert Murdoch, who controls the parent company of Fox News, told The Washington Post that Stirewalt’s dismissal “had nothing to do with Arizona’s correct call by the United States. Fox decision board “.
After Fox fired him, Stirewwalt, not to mention Fox News, said the “drum men” in the media helped propel the false narrative that the election was stolen from Trump.
“The rebellion of the populist right against the results of the 2020 elections was in part a cynical and conscious effort by political operators and their drummers in the media to steal an election or at least try to do so. get rich, ”he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. op-ed. “But it was also the tragic consequence of the information malnutrition that is so severely affecting the nation.”
Fox News representatives and the select committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
– CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger and Brian Schwartz contributed to this report.