Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) confirmed Wednesday that he spoke to the FBI as part of an ongoing probe into attempts to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.
Bowers told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins he was interviewed for about four hours a few months ago as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts after he lost the 2020 race to Joe Biden. The revelation adds new context to the Justice Department’s investigation and suggests a wide scope for possible charges that could relate to misconduct committed across several states.
In a separate case, Trump was charged last month with 37 federal offenses related to his handling of classified documents.
“I’m hesitant to talk about subpoenas etc. But I was interviewed by the FBI,” Bowers said Wednesday. He noted that the interviewers’ questions led him to believe their investigation was far-reaching, although he said he offered “nothing new.”
“There is a lot of information about lawyers who work with them. About Mr. Giuliani who made the calls and visited us. And other members of [Trump’s] team, who it was, when the meetings were held, what was discussed in those meetings or in that meeting,” he added. “And so I assume everyone is involved. How does that work as threshold evidence? I don’t know. I just experiment with a brush.”
Bowers testified before lawmakers last year that he rejected the President’s effortsthen led by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, to change the results of the Arizona presidential election despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud.
“I said, ‘Look, you’re asking me to do something that’s contrary to my oath when I swore to uphold the Constitution, and I also swore to uphold the Arizona Constitution and the laws of the State of Arizona ‘” Bowers said he told Giuliani, according to his testimony before the House of Representatives special committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. “This is completely alien to me as an idea or theory and I would never do anything of this magnitude without thorough consultation with qualified attorneys.”
The CNN interview comes just a week after The Washington Post reported extensively on it Trump’s pressure attempts Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (right) wants to cancel the state’s 2020 results. Trump reportedly called Ducey in hopes the governor would help back up his false claims of voter fraud. Ducey did not, confirming the state’s election results on November 30, 2020.
The effort bears striking similarities to Trump’s attempts to overturn the Georgia election results. The then-president called Georgia’s Foreign Minister Brad Raffensperger (R) in the final days of his tenure, urging the official to help him “find” additional votes that would allow him a win over Biden.
This call is that too focus of an investigation in Fulton County, Georgia.
Smith is reportedly facing charges as part of the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Investigators have questioned or subpoenaed numerous people associated with Trump in recent months, including Giuliani, Raffensperger and others Arizona election officials.