At Jan. 6 hearing, GOP state election officials detail pushback to Trump's pressure

Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, got emotional Tuesday as he described to the committee the pressure placed on him by Trump and others to violate his oath to the Constitution.

Bowers said he was not presented with any strong evidence that would have given him doubt as to the integrity of the election.

"It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, one of my most basic foundational beliefs," Bowers said. "And so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being. I will not do it."

After Trump claimed earlier Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social that Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers told him the election was rigged, Bowers said that was "false."

"I did have a conversation with the president. That certainly isn't it. There are parts that are true. There are parts that are not," Bowers said, asked about Trump's claim. "Anyone, anywhere, anytime [saying] I said the election was rigged, that would not be true," he added.

Bowers said Trump's team claimed widespread fraud in Arizona but couldn't provide evidence of it.

"I did not feel that the evidence, and its absence, merited the hearing," he said, explaining that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani wanted him to reconvene his state legislature to change the state's vote. "I didn't want to be used as a pawn."

"I said, look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath that 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," Bowers recalled. "You're asking me to do something against my oath. I will not break my oath."

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who was pressured by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to decertify Biden's victory in the state, according to emails reviewed by ABC News, as well as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to The Arizona Republic, faced the first questions from the committee on Tuesday, establishing that he did support Trump's re-election bid.

Bowers and other state officials on the first panel did not deliver opening statements, but Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the Republican House speaker of Arizona will talk about "conversations with the president, with Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, what's the president's team asked of him and how his oath of office would not permit it."

A spokesperson said for the Arizona House of Representatives said that Bowers is appearing in response to a committee subpoena.

-ABC News' Ali Dukakis

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., described the pressure placed on state officials as a "dangerous precursor" to the violence the nation witnessed on Jan. 6, 2021.

"This pressure campaign brought angry phone calls and texts, armed protests, intimidation, and, all too often, threats of violence and death," Schiff said in his opening statement. "State legislators were singled out. So, too, were statewide elections officials. Even local elections workers, diligently doing their jobs, were accused of being criminals, and had their lives turned upside down."

Trump's supporters, Schiff said, saw his conduct toward local officials as "a call to action."

"The president's lie was -- and is -- a dangerous cancer on the body politic," Schiff said. "If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that anytime they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?"