The longtime Republican had packed a red tie but felt too risqué, so he donned a blue one instead. She then walked alone to the US Capitol grounds and slowly found her way to the courtroom that would become the setting for the highlight of her decades-long political career.
Bowers was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection to testify about the events that followed Trump’s loss of 10,457 votes in Arizona. Bowers voted for Trump, campaigned for Trump, but would not break the law for him, and as a result, his political future was compromised, his character was questioned, and his family was harassed while his daughter died. .
He woke up early on Tuesday to read some of the notes he kept during that time, written in italics in personal notebooks.
“Am I too prepared?” Bowers said in an interview. “I have no idea. We’ll find out when I walk into that room.
When he entered, his goal was to bring a measure of conciliation, not conflict, to this moment.
“I would like, for whatever small part I had, to reduce the conflict and work towards a more continuous reconciliation of people,” he said. “I don’t need to win anything.”
Shortly before the hearing began, he received a call from a lawyer for the Arizona House of Representatives who relayed that Trump had issued a statement saying Bowers “told me the election was rigged and I won Arizona.” Bowers laughed at the absurdity.
In the courtroom, Bowers sat next to Georgia election officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabe Sterling, who faced similar pressure from Trump and his allies to reverse their defeat there. Later that day, the committee heard testimony from former Georgia poll worker Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, whose life was threatened after Rudy Giuliani, a Trump attorney, claimed she participated in a fake ballot scheme. . Bowers and Moss received the award John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year for his efforts to protect democracy.
Bowers went first and began his testimony by refuting Trump’s statement.
“I had a conversation with the president,” he said carefully and deliberately, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. “It is certainly not that. Anywhere, someone, at any time, has said that I said the election was rigged, that wouldn’t be true.”
Bowers, a professional artist known for his storytelling, then recounted his first conversation with Trump and Giuliani, which came after a church service in the weeks after the 2020 election. Bowers reminded them by asking him to convene the legislature to investigate their unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud and put in place a strategy to replace elected voters with another group more favorable to Trump. Bowers repeatedly asked them for evidence beyond rumors and innuendo that the election was stolen. Giuliani said he would turn over such evidence, but it never came. Bowers said he told them his legal theory was foreign to him and that he needed to consult with his attorneys.
“I said, ‘Look, you’re asking me to do something that goes against my oath,'” Bowers testified. He told the men that he would not break his oath and defend the Constitution.
For several weeks, Giuliani and other Trump allies failed to submit promised paperwork, and Bowers refused to authorize an official legislative hearing to review allegations of widespread fraud. A “circus” had been building around these allegations, and Bowers said he didn’t want it to show up in the Arizona House of Representatives.
Instead, another Republican House member and vocal election denier held a meeting in which he filed allegations of wrongdoing at a downtown Phoenix hotel. That same day, Governor Doug Ducey (R) certified the results of the Arizona election.
The next day, December 1, 2020, Bowers attended an in-person meeting with Giuliani, attorney Jenna Ellis, state legislators from the Arizona Republican Party, and others, where they again pressured him to help overturn the election results. .
He remembered something Giuliani said: “He said, ‘We have a lot of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.’ ”
At the time, Bowers wrote in a diary page telling Giuliani and the group: “The US Constitution. It does not say that I can reverse the laws that I work to defend and that color this very problem.”
In the absence of evidence from Giuliani and others, the speaker from Arizona felt he was being asked to violate his oath to the Constitution.
“I won’t do that, and,” Bowers testified, pausing to control his emotions. “On more than one, on more than one occasion throughout all of this it has been mentioned. And it is a principle of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, of my most basic fundamental beliefs. And for me to do that because someone just asked me to is foreign to my very being.
On January 3, 2021, an attorney for the Arizona House of Representatives spoke with pro-Trump attorney John Eastman, who anticipated a legal theory to decertify Arizona voters. The next day, Eastman laid out his theory during a call with Bowers, who asked if he had ever tried his strategy. Eastman encouraged him to give it a try and let the courts figure it out. Bowers refused.
A final attempt to persuade Bowers came on the morning of January 6, shortly before the Capitol riots.
It came from his own congressman, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a loyal Trump ally, former president of the Arizona Senate and former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, who cast doubt on the 2020 election results. He asked Bowers to support voter decertification.
“I said I wouldn’t do it,” Bowers recalled.
That tough stance made him the target of nasty protests and accusations. In early December, supporters of “Stop the Steal” gathered in the lobby of the state House. Bowers was out of town at the time, but some in the crowd called out his name. On Tuesday, the committee released video showing these protesters, including Jake Angeli, the “QAnon shaman” who wore a fur hat, horns, and face paint as he entered the Capitol on January 6. It was an ominous sign of the violence to come. .
In the weeks that followed, the Bowers neighborhood of Mesa, an eastern suburb of Phoenix, was virtually occupied at times by caravans of Trump supporters.
They yelled at Bowers through megaphones, filmed his home and led ridicule parades that featured a civilian military-style truck. At one point, a man showed up with a gun and was threatening Bowers’ neighbor.
“When I saw the gun, I knew I had to get closer,” he testified.
Angry pro-Trump voters tried unsuccessfully to recall Bowers, and Bowers said they distributed fliers accusing him of corruption and pedophilia.
As the drama unfolded outside her home, her daughter, Kacey, died inside.
She was “upset about what was going on outside, and my wife is a brave person. Very very strong. Calm. Very strong woman,” Bowers said, her chin trembling. “So, it was disturbing. It was disturbing.”
Kacey Bowers died on January 28, 2021, as efforts by some Republicans to deepen doubts about Trump’s loss accelerated and plunged her father deeper into the 2020 election debate. Republicans that he is doing the right thing, but with little luck. She faces challengers in the Republican primary on August 2 in Arizona.
It is a position he is willing to live with. He thinks that the judgment of the voters is trivial compared to the final judgment of his creator. At the end of his testimony, Bowers read a journal entry from December 2020.
“In the eyes of men, I may not have correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation lightly, fearfully or vindictively,” he said. “I don’t want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play by the laws to which I have sworn allegiance. With any artificial desire to divert my deep and fundamental desire to follow the will of God as I believe he led to embrace my conscience. How else will I approach him in the wilderness of life knowing that I am asking for this guidance only to prove myself a coward in defending the course… he led me to take?
After testifying, Bowers headed to the airport and headed home to finish the primary duties of the state legislature: pass a budget before the fiscal year ends. A heavier task awaits her this weekend: pick up his daughter’s tombstone.
While eating a salad by himself, he realized that he forgot to tell the panel that he will not be forced out of public service.
“They can beat me,” he said of the upcoming election, “but they’re not going to intimidate me.”
Reference-www.washingtonpost.com