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Hours before Arizona House Speaker Russell Rusty Bowers (right) testified about refusing to help Donald Trump undo the 2020 election, he sat alone in his Capitol Hill hotel room, reading quotes for the courage of John F. Kennedy and watching a video of a church elder claiming to be a peacemaker.
The 69-year-old Bowers is wearing a new white shirt and suit he bought years ago, one he keeps for special occasions, such as a visit to a Latter-day Saint Jesus Church. Although formal, it makes him feel comfortable.
The lifelong Republican had worn a red tie, but he seemed too bold, so he put on a blue one instead. He then traveled alone to the US Capitol and slowly found his way to the hearing room, which would be the highlight of his decade-long political career.
Bowers was summoned by a House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 uprising to testify to the aftermath of Trump’s loss of 10,457 votes in Arizona. Bowers had voted for Trump, campaigned for Trump, but would not break the law for him – and as a result, his political future was threatened, his character was questioned and his family was harassed while his daughter died.
He woke up early on Tuesday to read some of the notes he was taking during that time, written in italics in personal notebooks.
“Am I too prepared?” Bowers said in an interview. “I have no idea. We’ll find out when I walk into this room.
When he entered, his goal was to bring a measure of reconciliation, not conflict, at this point.
“I would like, despite my small part, to reduce the conflict and work for a longer reconciliation of the people,” he said. “I don’t need to win anything.”
WATCH: Commission Holds Fourth Public Hearing Series on 6 January (Full Live Stream)
Shortly before the hearing began, he received a call from an Arizona House attorney who said Trump had issued a statement claiming that Bowers “told me the election was rigged and that I won Arizona.” Bowers laughed at the absurdity.
In the hearing room, Bowers sat next to Georgia election officials Brad Rafensperger and Gabe Stirling, who faced similar pressure from Trump and his allies to reverse their loss there. Later in the day, the commission heard testimony from former Georgia election official Vandrea Arshaye “Shaye” Moss, whose life was in danger after Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, claimed she was involved in a fake ballot. Bowers and Moss received the John F. Kennedy Award for Courage this year for their efforts to defend democracy.
Bowers went first and began his testimony, refuting Trump’s statement.
“I had a conversation with the president,” he said carefully and deliberately, his glasses landing on the tip of his nose. “It simply came to our notice then. “Wherever someone has said at any time that I have said that the election was rigged, that will not be true.”
Trump’s pressure has provoked violence and threats against local officials, the commission said
Bowers, a professional artist known for his storytelling, then recounted his first conversation with Trump and Giuliani, which came after a church service in the weeks following Bowers reminded them that they had asked him to convene the legislature to investigate their baseless allegations of voter fraud and to launch a strategy to replace elected voters with another group more favorable to Trump. Bowers has repeatedly asked them for evidence beyond rumors and a hint that the election was stolen. Giuliani said he would present such evidence, but it never appeared. Bowers said he had told them that their legal theory was foreign to him and that he should consult with his lawyers.
“I said, ‘Look, you’re asking me to do something that goes against my oath,'” Bowers said. He told the men that he would not break his oath and would abide by the Constitution.
For weeks, Giuliani and other Trump allies failed to provide the promised documents, and Bowers refused to allow a formal legislative hearing to review allegations of widespread fraud. A “circus” revolved around these allegations, and Bowers said he did not want to be brought to Arizona House.
THE ATTACK: The January 6 siege of the US Capitol was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event.
Instead, another member of the GOP Chamber and a voter withholder held a meeting that included allegations of irregularities at a hotel in downtown Phoenix. That same day, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) certified the election results in Arizona.
The next day, December 1, 2020, Bowers attended a face-to-face meeting with Giuliani, attorney Jenna Ellis, Arizona GOP lawmakers and others, where he was again pressured to help overturn election results.
He recalled something that Giuliani said: “He said, ‘We have a lot of theories – we just don’t have the evidence.’ ”
At the time, Bowers wrote on a magazine page that he had told Giuliani and the band: “The US Constit. it doesn’t say that I can change the laws I’m working on to maintain which color exactly this problem is. “
In the absence of evidence from Giuliani and others, the Arizona speaker said he had been asked to break his oath to the Constitution.
“I will not do this and” Bowers testified, pausing to control his emotions. “In more than one – more than once in all this has been raised. And the principle of my faith is that the Constitution is divinely inspired – by my most fundamental beliefs. And so I do this because someone just asked me to do it is alien to my very being.
On January 3, 2021, an Arizona House lawyer spoke with pro-Trump attorney John Eastman, who visualized a legal theory for deserting voters in Arizona. The next day, Eastman presented his theory in a conversation with Bowers, who asked him if his strategy had ever been tested. Eastman encouraged him to simply try and let the courts decide. Bowers refused.
The last attempt to persuade Bowers came on the morning of January 6, shortly before the Capitol riot.
It came from his own congressman, Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), A loyal ally of Trump, a former president of the Arizona Senate and former Speaker of the House of Representatives for freedom, who voiced no doubt about the 2020 election results. He asked Bowers to support the desertification of voters.
“I said I wouldn’t do it,” Bowers recalled.
This firm stance has made him the object of protests and unpleasant accusations. In early December, Stop theft supporters gathered in the lobby of the State Chamber. Bowers was out of town at the time, but some in the crowd shouted his name. On Tuesday, the commission unveiled a video of these protesters, including Jake Angeli, the “QAnon shaman” wearing a leather hat, horns and face paint when he entered the Capitol on January 6. It was an ominous sign of the violence that would come.
In the weeks that followed, Bowers’ neighborhood in Mesa, a suburb east of Phoenix, was at times practically occupied by caravans of Trump supporters.
They shouted at Bowers through megaphones, photographed his home and led parades to ridicule him, involving a civilian military truck. At one point, a man with a gun appeared and threatened Bowers’ neighbor.
“When I saw the gun, I knew I had to get closer,” he testified.
Enraged Trump voters have tried unsuccessfully to recall Bowers, and Bowers said they have distributed leaflets accusing him of corruption and pedophilia.
As the drama unfolded outside his home, his daughter Casey died in it.
She was “upset by what was happening outside, and my wife is a valiant man. Very, very strong. quietly. A very strong woman, Bowers said, his chin trembling. “It simply came to our notice then. It was disturbing. “
Casey Bowers died on January 28, 2021, as some Republicans’ efforts to deepen suspicions about Trump’s loss accelerated and plunged her father deeper into the 2020 election debate. He tried to convince fellow Republicans that doing the right thing, but with a little luck. He faces opposition in the Republican primary in Arizona on Aug. 2.
This is a position he is ready to live with. He believes that the assessment of voters is trivial compared to the possible assessment of its creator. At the end of his testimony, Bowers read a diary entry from December 2020.
“In the eyes of the people, I may not hold the right views or act on their vision or beliefs, but I do not accept the current situation lightly, cowardly or vindictively,” he said. “I do not want to be a winner by deception. I will not play with the laws to which I swore allegiance. With some imaginary desire to deflect my deep, fundamental desire to follow God’s will, because I believe he led my conscience to embrace. How else am I going to approach him in the desert of life, knowing that I am asking for this guidance just to be a coward in defending the course … he made me take it. ”
After testifying, Bowers headed to the airport, heading home to complete the state’s main responsibilities: adopting a budget before the end of the fiscal year. A more difficult task awaits him this weekend: to take his daughter’s tombstone.
While eating the salad alone, he realized that he had forgotten to tell the committee that he would not be forced to leave public service.
“They can beat me,” he said of the upcoming election, “but they will not harass me.”
The uprising on January 6
The House Election Commission, which is investigating the uprising of January 6, 2021, is holding its third high-profile hearing this month. Find the latest here.
Hearings in Congress: A House of Representatives commission investigating the attack on the US Capitol has conducted more than 1,000 interviews in the past year. He will share his findings in a series of hearings starting on June 9th. Here is what we know about the hearings and how to watch them.
the riot: On January 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of …
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