name is redacted but we believe this was january eastman pushed then arizona speaker of the house rusty bowersrizona's presidential electors telling him to, quote, just do it and let the court sort it out. bowers declined to do so. then on january 4th, eastman met at the white house with unindicted coconspirator number one, former president donald trump and mike pence and others to delay the election of the lawfully chosen. the point you're making clearly kenneth chesebro or john eastman themselves, there are individuals who are opening and working with attorney general chris maze leading up to this indictment here today. >> wow. that is interesting information. thank you for that update. joyce, your reaction to that and just on the fact that eastman is now multiple times indictmented in this scheme, his law license has been challenged. this is ruined his life. this has been sort of his white whale since the year 2000 election. this idea that states could just overturn the will of the people and put whatever president they preferred in. this is a belief system he had for a really long time. gi

. >> let me ask you about somebody who is also named in the indictment, speaker rusty bowers. it details an extensive pressure campaign against speaker bowers. he refused to go along with the pressure campaign from the president, rudy giuliani, and se several of the people indicted. i spoke to him yesterday. here's what he said. >> i'm not the prosecutor, i'm not the advocate, i'm a witness. and when i put my hand on the bible or whatever they do, i'm going to tell the truth. >> the gop has called speaker bowers unfit to serve. how do you think about speaker bowers and how he handled the pressure campaign and that moment in arizona history? >> i think he's an american hero. i think he's been a beacon of moral courage. so i think that we need to have an introspective moment when we're throwing people like rusty bowers out of the party, out of polite society within the republican party. we need to be doing -- we need to be asking what changed that a man who we held in high regard, what happened that we were willing to call this man unfit to serve overnight? and so i think that r

and let the courts handle the rest from there. >> rusty bowers, if we can show his picture again. he provided some of the most -- he was one of the people who testify publicly during the hearing. stallworth conservative, lifelong republican. very religious and devout mormon. he talked about the insane pressure to do something he said was flatly illegal, to basically have the state legislature vote to send the trump electors, rather than the bible electors, -- of the charges here, therefore count. conspiracy is the first. count two is fraudulent schemes and artifices. count three is fraudulent schemes and practices. count four through nine are forgery. the last count, -- accounts, these individuals attested to something in a document we have access to the faith sent to the national archives that was simply not true. they said we are the duly appointed electors -- and signed her name to it. >> they signed their names to it and sent it to congress and the national archive. you can go in google it. anyone at home can google it. -- this is, i think with this comes into play, the extent

but after that, we have in this indictment the fact that john eastman replaced a phone call to rusty bowers, the speaker of the house, urging him to decertify arizona's election results and send the fake slate of electors to washington and then just let the courts handle the rest from there. >> rusty bowers, show his picture again, folks may or may not remember provided some of the most compelling testimony in the january 6 committee. he was one of the people who would testify publicly during a hearing very stalwart conservative, lifelong republican, very religious and devout mormon who talked about, the insane pressure that was brought to bear on him to do something that he said was just flatly illegal, which was to basically have the state legislature vote to send the trump electors, rather than the biden electors, despite the fact that biden had actually won that state. the charges here, there are four counts here, as i see them. conspiracy is the first count two, i like this, fraudulent schemes and artifices account is fraudulent schemes and practices in counts four to nine are forgery

i do want to bring in rusty bowers central to this entire indictment. rusty is the former republican speaker of the house of representatives in arizona famously, rusty, you testified before the january 6 committee about how trump and giuliani pressure you to overturn the 2020 election results in arizona. i know you and i've had a chance to speak many times, but now here we are. rusty. we've got 58 page indictment in your state what's your reaction from what you know so far? >> well, from what i know is what you just told me if that's the case that i'm a witness and i i hesitate in talking about it's ten length other than what i publicly have said previously rusty, i am, you literally we are breaking this on the air, so i will admit here i'm reading as we're covering it but i'm just looking at page 31 is one of the places where you are introduced. >> here's how they introduced you. they say russell, rusty bowers served in the arizona legislature from 20 to the beginning of 2023 lay out who you are and then they talk about the extensive pressure that you

no fewer than six the defendants contacted rusty bowers either privately or publicly on social media to get him to cooperate. george's indictment completes that the chair. it adds that trump was also part of that pressure campaign. he himself, donald trump, called rusty bowers at least twice during that same time frame, including once or twice around christmas day to get him on board with the unlawful plan. he told then-president trump, "i voted for you, . it worked f you, i campaigned for you, i just won't do anything illegal for you." joining me now is the democratic victory of state of arizona, adrian fontes. in his previous role as the maricopa county recorder, he oversaw the administration of the 2020 elections in arizona's largest county and witnessed the threats against election workers and against democracy. secretary adrian fontes, good to see you, thank you for being with us. >> thank you so much for having me, how are you doing this morning question >> i am well, thank you. you were on the floor front lines of seeing how this is happening in terms of voting. the thing abou

they say russell, rusty bowers served in the arizona legislature from 2015 to the beginning of 2023. they lay out who you are and then they talk about the extensive pressure that you spoke about being under two to overturn the election in the state? house that you said you were getting hundreds of emails demanding that i do my constitutional duty and name electors that will vote for trump. that you then said you were quote, getting very strange and unsettling phone calls telling me to do my duty and vote to elect vote or electors who will vote for trump? rusty, how intense was this pressure well, there was pressure and it was intense and it was it's now going on almost three years, but it's it was intense but for some that might have been real troubling i don't know how i feel about it now at the time it was it was certainly demanding of my staff, my assistance they had to put up with thousands, not hundreds, thousands of emails and calls. >> so there are troopers and rick, can you hear me? >> yes, i can hear you, rusty, i know you're on the phone and we were dealing with that connec

and they held because of people like rusty bowers, the speaker of the arizona state house, who refused repeatedly the pressure of donald trump to take unconstitutional actions because of mike pence. they held because individuals in positions that mattered did the right thing. and the lesson for all of us, i'm amazed how many leaders seem to view themselves as bystanders. let's ignore trump and he will go away and we do not have to defeat him. no, we actually have to defeat him and we all have to do that. not just those in elected office. we have to hold elected officials to a higher standard. when i think about the most memorable and consequential experiences in the house, before the select committee, it was times when i was in a debate with someone i did not agree with on whatever the issue was, but they were knowledgeable. another member or members who knew what they're talking about, understand why they arrived at the view that they had. i hope i could come into the debate as prepared as they were. when you show that respect, that is how you get good policy. you're willing to listen

there's some evidence of the president speaking to rusty bowers to encourage a special session, but wedon't have at least as far as the select committee was able to determine as much evidence as president trump personally engaging with people in arizona as much as he did with folks in georgia and in michigan and in pennsylvania and elsewhere. so my guess is that the quantum of evidence of his personal participation beyond being generally in charge and the proximate cause of the strategy, the architect, with eastman and giuliani of strategy, more direct evidence of his personal participation in arizona. as andrew said, that might come from some of these people if they cooperate. the nature of a conspiracy is it's a concerted action, people working together and some of those people say oh, yeah, i talked to president trump and he encouraged me to do this or that. there could be additional evidence that comes as a result of cooperation and guilty pleas from some of the 19 or 20 people indicted thus far. >> andrew, we know rudolph giuliani is losing his license to practice law. he's under

other witnesses like ruby freeman& j moss, whose lives are up during the 2020 election think about rusty bowers. i think about brian butler, who courageously came forward with you a couple of weeks ago, and he was interviewed in the mar-a-lago case, worked for trump at mar-a-lago. he came forward now because he believes that the information that he has is really important for the american people to know and understand that takes courage because you do know that there are going to be negative impacts on your security situation. your potential future job prospects, people coming after you publicly but also for your family. and that's it i think about people like that who don't have the resources or they don't have the ability to protect themselves when we talk about donald trump's, how he's completely devoid of any leadership quality that right there tells you who donald trump is. he wages attacks on the american people. >> i'm sorry. glad you brought up brian butler because he's the former mar-a-lago employee who is now a witness in the classified documents investigation kind of similar to lobby

doesn't have to do with the justice department, has to do with the president placing a call to rusty bowers and arizona to ask him to do something that was illegal. the president telling rudy giuliani to spread the idea of this fault elector scheme to various people is private attorney that is not an official act. a call to raffensperger to raffensperger, the secretary of state and saying, find me 11,000 more votes. this there's nothing about this that is entangled with the official powers of the presidency and any one of those counts of the indictment are deadly for this president. i think that's why sour didn't come back after for rebuttal because i think having made the concessions, he made and having had the court frankly, not not react in the way that one might have expected. i think he thought it was better that he not come back up to the podium and further unravel his case. the problem is not whether sour sour did a terrific job ob or whether these private acts and official acts are co-mingled. >> it's the proclivity of a majority of this supreme court to give the benefit of the doub

. >> or rusty bowers. >> right. i was there just two blocks away at the hilton on election night when the press riser is michael cohen and these are people that helped him become president of the united states. >> and hope hicks. >> and frustrating part is only beginning because the key figures in his life politics aside are going to be the ones here, it is not just the nameless faces but these people that were friends of his. >> and inner circle. no one is going anywhere we have so much more to get to. before we head to break. there is news to tell you about from capitol hill. there were two articles of impeachment today against homeland security secretary mayorkas, they have bone failed and they're voting right now to adjourn the trial. we'll monitor those for you. >>> and also ahead, another group of republicans on capitol hill doing the bidding of vladimir putin trying to deny much needed military aid to ukraine. marie you've anovich will be show us what needs to be done. >>> and how january 6 could have gone to

and i could tell you that rusty bowers has already spoken with investigators in chris mays' office ands totally a open book to the select committee. but the fact that mays' office is speaking to him is another indicator of the thorough approach that she's taking into this investigation. biggs and gosar are helping to understand what happened and two of trump's key lieutenants, two of his top house allies at multiple levels of this undertaking and of course their both still prominent national figures. they have some counterparts in arizona who have not household names but could become two of the fake electors, anthony kern and state hoffman are now state senators. both of those men are in the space where mays is considering potentially bringing indictments, one of them state senator kern had a press conference outside of a courthouse in arizona within -- within the last week or two saying that he thought chris may was trying to put him in prison because he was too supportive of trump. and these feel like stories when you talk about state lawmakers but they have consequences because ariz