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

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers emotionally recounted the pushback he and his family faced under immense pressure from Trump's top team, who tried to convince him there was a law in Arizona that would have allowed him to overturn electors in the state -- which did not legally exist.

Bowers summarized the effort to go around him and send fake Arizona electors to Washington as a "tragic parody" and recounted from his personal journal how people turned on him as Trump continued to espouse the 'big lie.'

"It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor," he said. "I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner."

"I do not want to be a winner by cheating," he added. "I will not play with laws I swear allegiance to with any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep, foundational desire to follow God's will as I believe he let my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness of life knowing that I ask of His guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he led me to take."

He mentioned the threats around his home and how it upset is daughter, Kacey Rae Bowers, who was gravely ill at the time. She passed away at age 42, just days after the attack on the Capitol, on Jan. 28, 2021.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, niece of Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, made her first appearance at a Jan. 6 hearing in video testimony where she was asked about the scheme to send "fake" electors to Congress to decertify President-elect Joe Biden's win.

The House select committee says the RNC assisted Trump in coordinating the effort "at the president's direct request."

"He turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then preceded to talk about the importance of -- helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing change the results of any states," McDaniel recounted.

"The campaign took the lead, and we just were helping them in that role," she added, appearing to try to distance the RNC from the effort.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers said he told Trump election lawyer John Eastman on two occasions that he would not break his oath of office and decertify electors for President-elect Joe Biden and recalled the conversations before the committee.

"I said, 'What would you have me do?' He said, 'Just do it and let the courts sorted out.' I said, 'You're asking me to do something that is never been done in history, the history of the United States. And I'm gonna put my state through that without sufficient proof? That's going to be good enough with me that I would put us through that, my state?"

Bowers recalled telling Eastman, "'I swore to uphold both in the Constitution and in law -- no, sir,'" and said that Eastman suggested he "do it" and let the courts figure it out.

Bowers also said he also received a call from Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, asking Bowers if he'd support the decertification of electors. Bowers told Biggs he would not.

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."