Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers didn’t waver during his testimony before the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
He appeared. I wish to tell the truth. I have honored his oath of him.
Just as he had done in the dark days after the 2020 presidential election, when President Donald Trump and his unquestioning lapdogs tried to pressure Bowers into illegally decertifying Arizona’s election results.
Bowers had asked for proof of election fraud from Trump’s people. He’d asked again and again. And he got nothing.
Still, he was asked to decertify the electors by those who called themselves fellow Republicans. He was asked to violate his oath of office and the entire democratic premise on which the country is based.
And he would not do it.
Biggs was among those pressing Bowers
Among those asking him, it turns out, was Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs.
A while back the committee issued subpoenas to Biggs and other members of Congress, saying in part that they want to hear from “those who had direct conversations with President Trump leading up to and during the attack, and those who were involved in the planning and coordination of certain activities on and before Jan. 6.”
Biggs called the committee “pure political theater.” He said the members are conducting a “baseless witch hunt.”
‘Don’t have the evidence’:Rusty Bowers says Giuliani showed no fraud
He said, “I will not be participating in the illegitimate and Democrat-sympathizing House Jan. 6 committee panel. The committee has been a sham since its origins. Its entire purpose is to destroy President Trump and his supporters of him, intimidate members of Congress, and distract Americans from real issues that are destroying this country. The committee operates with the same kind of bias present at the Salem Witch Trials. Everyone is guilty and must demonstrate their innocence. They are basing their witch-hunt on dubious media accounts.”
As I said at the time, a political hissy fit like that begs one simple question: Why is Biggs afraid of testifying under oath?
Bowers wouldn’t violate his oath
Now we know.
Bowers was asked if he’d been contacted by Biggs and asked to decertify Arizona presidential electors. By this time Bowers was more convinced than ever that there was no legal justification for doing so.
Bowers said of Biggs, “He asked if I would sign on both to a letter that had been sent from my state or that I would support the decertification of the electors, and I said I would not.”
Another view:Remember Arizona politicians who tried to destroy democracy
Bowers went on to say, as he’d come to believe long before this, “We have no legal pathway … for us to execute such a request.”
We already know that Biggs was intimately involved in Trump’s attempt to stage a coup.
Messages that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the select committee show Biggs contacting his pal Meadows (whom he succeeded as the head of the House’s Freedom Caucus) and suggesting that states with Republican-controlled legislatures like Arizona put together slates of alternate electors to replace legitimate electors – men and women who followed the law and the Constitution and honored the actual election results.
Arizona eventually sent two phony slates of electors to Washington, DC
Was there a request for a pardon?
The select committee also heard testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former executive assistant to Meadows, who said that at least 10 lawmakers, including Biggs, met in late December to knock around ideas for overturning the election results.
Bowers, like every other witness who has appeared before the committee, swore an oath to tell the truth.
Anyone who does so, then perjures himself, faces five years in prison.
If Biggs believes he has done nothing wrong, if he is proud of his actions, if he can defend them, tell the truth about them, under oath, then he should jump at the chance to expose the committee as the “pure political theater” he claims it is.
The committee sent Biggs a letter saying its investigators have been told by White House personnel that Biggs was among members of Congress who had sought pardons “for activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
The truth will set you free, or…
I should think that Biggs would want to answer questions about that, demand it even, and about all the other things the committee might want to know concerning his involvement in the attempt to keep Trump in office. I’d think he would be eager to do so, under oath, as Bowers did.
After all, Biggs has spoken in the past of his deep Christian faith. And the Bible tells us the truth will set you free.
Or…would it?
Reach Montini at [email protected].
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism