Here's what the Trump indictment says about former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers

The third indictment against former President Donald Trump is out, and his conversations with one Arizonan are central to the prosecution's case.

Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, testified to the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot that Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani, identified by prosecutors only as "Co-Conspirator 1," pressured him to help overturn the election. The episode found its way into the 45-page indictment.

Bowers also provides evidence against John Eastman, a California lawyer identified only as "Co-Conspirator 2."

The indictment alleges that on Nov. 22, 2020, Trump and Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who was Trump's personal lawyer at the time, called Bowers with goals of defrauding the election, including:

• Making false claims that a substantial amount of non-citizens and dead people had voted in the state;

• Asking Bowers to call the Arizona Legislature into session to hold a hearing based on their claims;

• Asking Bowers to use the Legislature to circumvent election processes and replace Biden electors with a new slate for Trump.

Bowers didn't do what Trump and Giuliani sought. Instead, he said he needed evidence of the claims, couldn't convene the Legislature without a supermajority vote from its members and was unaware of a legal basis for the Legislature to effectively replace the will of the state's voters. He first recounted his historic conversation with Trump and Giuliani to The Arizona Republic in 2021, and later did so for the nation in his 2022 testimony on Capitol Hill.

“You are giving me nothing but conjecture and asking me to break my oath and commit to doing something I cannot do because I swore I wouldn't. I will follow the Constitution," Bowers said he told the president and his lawyer.

In a public statement issued Dec. 4, 2020, Bowers essentially answered Trump and Giuliani, though their private conversation remained unknown for nearly another year. Bowers said that while he didn't like the results of the election, as he voted for Trump, he would not entertain a suggestion to violate the law to change the results.

"I and my fellow legislators swore an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and the constitution and laws of the state of Arizona," he wrote. "It would violate that oath, the basic principles of republican government and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people's vote."

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Bowers' full statement was included in the indictment Tuesday and he could serve as a key witness in the government's case. He acknowledged this summer that he had testified months ago to the grand jury that has now indicted Trump.

Bowers also first detailed his conversation with Eastman.

Bowers told The Republic in 2021 that Eastman explained how and why Arizona’s electors should be rejected before the upcoming meeting of Congress to formally certify the electoral results.

Almost all the examples Eastman cited in his reasoning for dismissing the results of Arizona’s election stemmed from Georgia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, those in attendance recalled.

“You’re the president’s lawyer, and I appreciate you’re doing this job,” Bowers said. “Has this ever been done before?”

According to the indictment, “Co-Conspirator 2 conceded that he ‘[didn’t] know enough about facts on the ground’ in Arizona but nonetheless told the Arizona House Speaker to decertify and ‘let the courts sort it out.’”

“It’s never been done in the history of the country,” Bowers recalled, “and I’m going to do that in Arizona? No.”

Overall, the indictment includes four counts relating to conspiracies to obstruct and defraud the United States and its' 2020 election.

Prosecutors maintain that Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly organized fraudulent slates of electors in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, all states carried by Biden in 2020.

Fraudulent electors met and cast fraudulent votes for Trump, signed documents saying that they were legitimate electors and transmitted those false certificates to Vice President Mike Pence to be counted at routine certification proceedings on Jan. 6.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump indictment: Here's what it says about Arizona's Rusty Bowers