Rusty Bowers, the former Arizona House speaker who stood up to Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, provided numerous pieces of evidence in the latest indictment against the former president.
Public statements and comments from Bowers have been heavily cited in the 45-page indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith's office, in which Trump and six co-conspirators are accused of plotting to keep the former president in power after he lost the election to Joe Biden.
The evidence Bowers provided helped prosecutors allege that Trump was not alone in his "criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power," and that several co-conspirators were also behind the plot.
Trump denies all wrongdoing in connection to Smith's probe and has accused prosecutors of "election interference." The four charges Trump now faces— conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights—are the latest in the long line of legal woes the former president has faced amid the GOP primary frontrunner's latest White House bid. Trump's office has been contacted for comment via email.
The indictment detailing the allegations against Trump include a meeting between Bowers, the former president, and his personal lawyer Giuliani, identified in the document only as "Co-Conspirator 1."
In December 2020, Bowers released a statement detailing how Trump and Giuliani had come to him with a "breathtaking" plot the previous month to appoint a group of fake electors who would falsely declare that Trump had beaten Joe Biden in Arizona, and award the Republican the 11 electoral points.
"As a conservative Republican, I don't like the results of the presidential election," Bowers said in the release. "I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election."
The meeting was cited in the indictment, stating that the Arizona House speaker refused Trump and Giuliani's plan and responded that the suggestion was "beyond anything he had ever heard or thought of as something within his authority."
In June 2022, Bowers testified to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack. During his testimony, Bowers described how he met with Giuliani again on December 1, 2022, and asked the Trump lawyers for proof that there was widespread election fraud such as he claimed, such as dead people voting.
"In my recollection, he said, 'We have lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence,'" Bowers told the panel.
The indictment also details conversations Bowers had with "Co-conspirator 2," who is believed to be Trump attorney John Eastman, who allegedly orchestrated the plot to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election results in Congress on January 6, despite knowing such a tactic would be illegal.
On January 4, 2021, two days before the Capitol riot, Eastman is said to have called Bowers in an attempt to get him to decertify Arizona's election results.
When Bowers said that there had been no evidence of substantial fraud in the state, Eastman replied that he "[didn't] know enough about facts on the ground" in Arizona, but still told Bowers to decertify the result and "let the courts sort it out," according to the indictment.
Bowers refused the request, telling Eastman that he would "not play with the oath" he had taken to uphold the U.S. Constitution and Arizona law.
Last month, Bowers revealed that he had met with federal prosecutors as part of the 2020 election probe, but claimed he had "offered them nothing new" from his previous public statements.
"They seemed to have a good grasp on all of the testimony that I had given," Bowers told CNN's Kaitlan Collins. "They were very aware of the January 6th committee testimony that I gave. There may have been something that I said that was of interest. But I don't remember anything standing out that had not been mentioned before."
Bowers was later censured by Arizona's Republican Party because of the testimony he gave to the January 6 panel.
Christine Adams, a former federal prosecutor and current partner with Adams, Duerk & Kamenstein, previously told Newsweek that Smith's office getting Bowers—a top Republican official—to answer questions shows that his federal probe is not politically motivated, as alleged by Trump.
"Federal investigators have gained the cooperation of former top GOP officials in their investigation, including Bowers and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which undercuts any assertions that the investigation is a partisan witch hunt," Adams said.
