Rusty Bowers

Arizona House Speaker Russell "Rusty" Bowers (R) testified Tuesday that former President Trump and his allies attempted to convince him that the election ...

- Bowers said he told the president he would not pursue anything illegal on his account. - When the lawyer pressed Bowers on it, the Arizona House speaker said he told him, "You’re asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath." - He said that after asking "multiple times" for evidence, Trump interrupted and said, "Give the man what he needs, Rudy!"

Whether or not the accumulating pile of evidence against Donald Trump induces Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict the defeated former president or ...

“I took an oath,” Bowers said he told Eastman. “For me to take that [course] would be counter to my oath.” Bowers asked, “What would you have me do?” Eastman responded that Bowers should just do it and let the courts sort it out. “You are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath, when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it,” he testified telling Giuliani. “This is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me.” He added that such an action would also be a violation of his faith and described in moving terms the threats of violence he received and the angry mobs that assembled outside his home. Meanwhile, a fake elector confessed he was a “useful rube” for the campaign and never would have participated if he knew key campaign lawyers objected. He had not made such a statement, Bowers said, and Trump’s claim that Bowers said Trump won the state was “also false.” Five people died on that day or in the immediate aftermath, and 140 police officers were assaulted. Charges: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants have been charged with seditious conspiracy, joining Oathkeepers leader Stewart Rhodes and about two dozen associates in being indicted for their participation in the Capitol attack. On the morning of Jan. 6, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) called Bowers and asked to support decertification. Texts obtained by the committee showed that a staffer said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wanted to deliver a fake electoral slate to Pence personally. Two Trump campaign lawyers testified they thought the plan was illegal and bowed out. Bowers asked incredulously if he was supposed to “do something that’s never been done in history — the history of the United States” with no proof. The shocker on Tuesday was that Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Meadows were also directly involved in the efforts to overturn Arizona’s results as well. Bowers, who supported Trump in the 2020 election, testified in unequivocal terms about the former president’s pressure campaign.

Former President Trump on Tuesday ripped Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), who is set to testify in front of the House select committee ...

We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. Bowers later survived a recall attempt in his state. Administration

The Arizona Republican who delivered emotional testimony Tuesday about resisting efforts to overturn the 2020 election long has been known as a maverick, ...

, has paid a high price for his resistance. His daughter died the 69-year-old Bowers one of the "few Republicans at the (state) Capitol who declined to give in to the collective psychosis that has infected some of the baser portions of his political base."

The speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers, who was the focus of an intense pressure campaign by President Donald J. Trump's allies ...

This year, Mr. Bowers was given the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his handling of the pressure campaign. Ahead of Mr. Bowers’s appearance, Mr. Trump issued a statement trying to undermine the lawmaker before he testified. The speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers, who was the focus of an intense pressure campaign by President Donald J. Trump’s allies after the 2020 election, will tell his story publicly for the first time at the Jan. 6 hearing on Tuesday. Parts of Mr. Bowers’s experience have been revealed previously: Mr. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, called Mr. Bowers as part of their efforts to undo Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House, faced intense pressure from Trump allies.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers told the January 6 committee that he paid a steep personal price for refusing to help overturn the election.

They just cut straight to the chase and call him a pedophile. Children were being kept in tunnels for a sprawling child sex trafficking ring run by elite pedophiles, and the proof was sitting in plain sight for anyone willing to do the research. Pedophile conspiracies act as a sort of propaganda of the counterrevolution, a fun-house reflection of the real threats to the social order. Moral/sex panics concerning children flow from these powerful ideas and help shape rhetoric and policy on a whole range of issues in US political culture. More recently, I interviewed Paul Renfro, an assistant professor of history at Florida State University and author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, during Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.) attempts to smear Biden’s Supreme Court Justice nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as a pedophile sympathizer. For a bit, the pedophile accusations were reserved for elite, liberal gatekeepers—the high-profile Democrats featured in John Podesta’s hacked emails, for example.

"Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers is the latest [Republican in name only] to play along"

Bowers testified that since the election, he, his office, and his family have faced a wave of threats that have put a significant burden on his personal and professional life. Ultimately, Bowers refused to go along with Trump's claims of election fraud. During his testimony on Tuesday, Bowers adamantly denied ever telling Trump that he had won the election.

The Arizona House speaker pushed back on Trump's request to toss out Arizona's 2020 election results—and opposed sweeping changes to Arizona's election ...

Republican officials in some other states also pushed back against Trump, including state legislators in Pennsylvania and Michigan who refused to declare Trump the winner of their states’ electoral votes. The House January 6 committee is unveiling the results of its months-long investigation into the Capitol riot over a series of public hearings, with a focus on Trump’s push to stay in office despite losing his reelection bid. “But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”

House Speaker Rusty Bowers stood tall in his testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, as he has since the 2020 election. Remember those that didn't.

“I do not want to be a winner by cheating. Should the fake electors plot not work, Townsend had a backup plan – a bill calling on the Legislature to decertify the vote and appoint the phony electors. Meanwhile, in Washington, Reps. Andy Biggs, Debbie Lesko and Paul Gosar were trying their level best to nullify Arizona’s vote. What remains utterly surprising – stunning, really – is the sheer number of Arizona’s so-called leaders who were (are) willing to set aside their oaths and overturn democracy. How they repeatedly pressured him to go along with decertifying Arizona’s election anyway and ask Congress to accept the GOP’s “alternate” set of electors. How else will I ever approach him in the wilderness of life knowing that I asked his guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he let me take?” (Never mind that there isn’t and you shouldn’t.) Rep. Walter Blackman of Snowflake, now a candidate for Congress, also signed onto the plan. Her bill noted that the Legislature has a “constitutional and legal obligation to ensure that the state’s presidential electors truly represent the will of the voters of Arizona.” Now Finchem is back this year with a similar bill to decertify the 2020 election, claiming there is “clear and convincing” evidence that the election was stolen – and oh, by the way, will you vote for him? “I do not want to be a winner by cheating,” Bowers told the House Select committee on Tuesday. “I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.” The fake slate was led by Kelli Ward (likely a future candidate for Congress) who like Finchem refused to comply with a subpoena to explain to the House Select committee how the fake elector scheme was hatched.

Over nearly an hour, Rusty Bowers, a Republican who is the speaker of the House of Representatives in Arizona, testified on Tuesday in painstaking and ...

“I thought of the book, ‘The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,’” Mr. Bowers said. Mr. Bowers also recalled speaking to Mr. Trump, making clear to the president that he “wouldn’t do anything illegal for him,” as one questioner, Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, said. Mr. Bowers’s personal journal contained an entry in which he said, “I do not want to be a winner by cheating. He also recalled his reaction when he learned that Trump advisers pushed ahead with a scheme to put forward slates of “alternate” electors. “She said, ‘Yes.’” “I said, ‘I want the names. The effort to persuade him to take steps to flip the outcome 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, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who maintained that he had evidence of fraud. Mr. Bowers described Ms. Ellis asserting that they had evidence of widespread voter fraud, only to provide none. “I did have a conversation with the president,” Mr. Bowers said. He was also asked for his reaction to a statement from Mr. Trump criticizing Mr. Bowers’s testimony in advance, in which he claimed that Mr. Bowers had told him the election was “rigged” and that he had won the state. “Aren’t we all Republicans here? (She died in late January.)