Rusty Bowers Censured By Arizona Republicans After Jan. 6 Testimony

The Arizona Republican committee censured Speaker of state House Rusty Bowers following his testimony at the public hearing conducted by the House select committee investigating that has been investigating last year’s January 6 Capitol attack for the past year.

“He is no longer a Republican in good standing & we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary,” Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward wrote on Twitter.

In his testimony, Bowers claimed that former President Donald Trump pressured him to hold an official committee hearing at the Arizona Capitol under a little-known ability in the state to remove President Joe Biden electors and replace them with fake Trump electors.

“You are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath, when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it,” he said in his testimony. “I also swore to the Constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona. This is totally foreign theory to me and I would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys … You’re asking me to do something against my oath and I will not break my oath.”

Bowers also contended that Trump lied in a press release stating that Bowers’ believed in a rigged election. He said that was never true.

Arizona was an important piece of Trump and attorney John Eastman‘s plan to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject certain electors in swing states to overturn the 2020 election results in favor of Trump. Biden won the Grand Canyon state by only 10,000 votes.