Former Arizona House Speaker Talked To FBI In 2020 Investigation

Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) confirmed Wednesday that he has spoken with the FBI as part of an ongoing investigation into attempts to overturn 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 of Trump and his allies’ efforts after he lost the 2020 race to Joe Biden. The revelation adds new context to the Justice Department’s probe and suggests a broad scope for any potential charges that could encompass misbehavior conducted across multiple states.

In a separate case, Trump was indicted last month on 37 federal criminal counts related to his handling of classified documents.

“I am hesitant to talk about any subpoenas, et cetera. But I have been interviewed by the FBI,” Bowers said Wednesday. He noted the interviewers’ questions made him think their investigation was broad, although he said he had offered “nothing new.”

“There is a lot of information about attorneys that work with them. About Mr. Giuliani that made the calls and visited us. And other members of [Trump’s] team, who they were, when the meetings were, what was discussed in those meetings or in that meeting,” he added. “And so I presume that all of them are involved. How that shakes out as the threshold evidence? I don’t know. I just dabble with a paintbrush.”

Bowers testified before lawmakers last year that he rejected the president’s efforts, led at the time by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, to change Arizona’s presidential election results despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

“I said, ‘Look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it, and I also swore to the Constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona,’” Bowers said he told Giuliani, according to his testimony before the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “This is totally foreign as an idea or a theory, to me, and I would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys.”

The CNN interview comes just a week after The Washington Post detailed Trump’s attempts to pressure Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to overturn the 2020 results in the state. Trump reportedly called Ducey in hopes the governor would help substantiate his false claims of election fraud. Ducey did not do so, and he certified the state’s election results on Nov. 30, 2020.

The effort bears striking similarities to Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia. The then-president called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in the waning days of his administration, urging the official to help him “find” additional votes that would see him defeat Biden.

That call is also the center of an investigation in Fulton County, Georgia.

Smith has reportedly been nearing charging decisions in the investigation over the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Investigators have interviewed or subpoenaed a host of people in the Trump orbit in recent months, including Giuliani, Raffensperger and other election officials in Arizona.

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