‘I Will Not Break My Oath’: Arizona Republican Delivers Powerful Testimony on Refusing Trump Demand He Overturn Election

An Arizona Republican gave powerful testimony to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol about refusing to go along with former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Rusty Bowers, the Arizona state House Speaker who voted for Trump, recalled on Tuesday being asked by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to overturn the election results in Arizona, which Joe Biden won.

He said, “Well, we have heard by an official high up in the Republican legislature that there is a legal theory or a legal ability in Arizona that you can remove the electors of President Biden and replace them. And we would like to have the legitimate opportunity through the committee to come to that end and remove that.” And I said, that’s totally new to me. I’ve never heard of any such thing.

And he pressed that point and I said, ‘Look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it and I also swore to the Constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona and this is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me, and I would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys. And I said I’ve got some good attorneys and I’m going to give you their names. But you’re asking me to do something against my oath and I will not break my oath.

Becoming emotional, Bowers also recalled that “on more than one occasion throughout all this, that has been brought up, and it is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired of my most basic foundational believes. And so for me to do that, because somebody just asked me to, is foreign to my very being. I will not do it.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.