For nearly an hour, Rusty Bowers, a Republican who is the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, testified on Tuesday with diligent and emotional details about the pressure campaign he faces a few weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election. Donald J. Trump lost the state.
Speaking slowly, Mr Bowers also told the House of Representatives selection committee about the harassment he experienced outside his home with Trump supporters in the weeks before January 6, 2021, calling him a “pedophile” and other epithets. .
Mr. Bowers, who speaks of the Constitution with reverence and spirituality, had tears in his eyes as he described his seriously ill daughter suffering some of the harassment outside their home. (She died in late January.)
“It was disturbing,” he said. “It was embarrassing.”
Efforts to persuade him to take steps to turn the result in Arizona to Mr Trump’s column – the state was won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. – began with pressure from Mr Trump and one of his lawyers, Rudolf W. Giuliani. who maintains that there is evidence of fraud. “Aren’t we all Republicans here?” I think we will get a better reception, “recalls Mr Bowers, who told Mr Giuliani at one point.
Shortly after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, certified the state for Mr. Biden, Mr. Giuliani and Associate Jenna Ellis met with Arizona lawmakers, including Mr. Bowers, Mr. Bowers recalled. Mr Bowers described Ms Ellis as saying there was evidence of widespread voter fraud, but did not provide any.
“I said, ‘I want the names.’ Do you have the names of the alleged dead or fraudulent voters? ”Said Mr Bowers. “She said yes.”
Nothing has been produced. In the end, he recalled, Mr Giuliani said: “We have many theories. We just don’t have the evidence. ”
Mr Bowers also recalls talking to Mr Trump, making it clear to the president that he “will not do anything illegal for him”, as one questioner, Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said. However, another lawyer advising Mr Trump, John Eastman, called Mr Bowers in early January and called on him to schedule a legislative vote to “de-certify voters, as we had the power to do so”.
Mr Eastman, Mr Bowers testified, said he should “just do it and let the courts know everything”.
Mr Bowers again rejected the insistence, saying: “I took an oath – to do what you do would be contrary to my oath.”
Finally, he testified, there was a call from another Trump supporter, Representative Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, on the morning of January 6, 2021, when the Electoral College vote was to be confirmed by a joint session of Congress. Mr Biggs, he said, forced him to revoke the state’s certification of his voters for Mr Biden.
“We have no legal way to” comply with such a request, “Mr. Bowers recalled. He also recalled his reaction when he learned that Trump’s advisers had passed a scheme to present lists of “alternative” voters. “I thought of the book The Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight,” Mr Bowers said.
Mr. Bowers’ personal diary contains an entry in which he says: “I do not want to be a winner by deception. I will not play with the laws to which I swore allegiance. ” He was invited to read it in the testimony.
He was also asked to respond to a statement by Mr Trump criticizing Mr Bowers’ testimony, in which he claimed that Mr Bowers had told him that the election had been “rigged” and that he had won. the state.
“I had a conversation with the president,” Mr Bowers said. “That’s definitely not the case.”
A moment later, more emphatically, he said: “Everywhere, everyone, at any time has said that I said that the election was rigged – this will not be true.
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