Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers Refuses Giuliani's Demand to Replace Electors -- "I Will Not Break My Oath" (2020-11-20)

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) testifies before the January 6 committee that Rudy Giuliani called him in late November 2020, demanding that Arizona convene a hearing to remove Biden electors and replace them with Trump electors. When Bowers repeatedly asked Giuliani for evidence of the fraud allegations Giuliani was publicly claiming, Giuliani never provided any -- "not during the call, after the call, or to this day, never."

Bowers testified that Giuliani cited a "legal theory" from an unnamed high-ranking Republican that Arizona could remove Biden electors. Bowers told Giuliani: "You are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath when I swore to the constitution to uphold it. I also swore to the constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona. This is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me. I would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys. But you are asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath."

Giuliani later pressured Bowers again, and Bowers continued to refuse. Bowers described the Trump team's election challenge as a "circus" and said he "did not feel that the evidence merited a hearing." He also testified that Giuliani wanted to use the Arizona legislature to create a mechanism to replace electors -- a key component of the broader fake elector scheme that culminated in the January 6 attack.