 Immediately, I saw that the White House on my Bluetooth was calling, and I took the call and was asked by the, I would presume the operator at the White House if I would hold for the President, which I did, and Mr. Giuliani came on first. And niceties, then Mr. Trump, President Trump, then President Trump came on. And we initiated a conversation. And the conversation did, you ask Mr. Giuliani for proof of these allegations of fraud that he was making? On multiple occasions, yes. And when you asked him for evidence of this fraud, what did he say? He said that they did have proof, and I asked him, do you have names? For example, we have 200,000 illegal immigrants, some large number, 5,000 or 6,000 dead people, etc. And I said, do you have their names? Yes. Will you give them to me? Yes. And the President interrupted and said, give the man what he needs, Rudy. He said, I will. And that happened on at least two occasions that interchanged in the conversation. So Mr. Giuliani was claiming in the call that there were hundreds of thousands of undocumented people and thousands of dead people who had purportedly voted in the election? Yes. And you asked him for evidence of that? I did. And did he ever receive, did you ever receive from him that evidence either during the call, after the call, or to this day? Never. That was a snippet from today's January 6th Select Committee public hearing. And we just heard from Rusty Bowers, who is a Republican. In fact, he endorsed Donald Trump in 2020, and he is the Republican Speaker of the Arizona House. And what he just described was Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani calling him, telling him that the election was fraudulent, providing him with no evidence. Now again, I think it's important to emphasize that this man is no liberal, but he's saying they're telling me that there's fraud and they're providing me with zero evidence. Now this is important because what he's going to say next during his testimony is truly devastating for Donald Trump. And even though there's more hearings that will take place, I'm to the point where if they don't prosecute Donald Trump with all of the evidence that we have, there's no hope for democracy. So what you're going to see now is Rusty Bowers testify under oath about how Trump pressured him to literally commit election fraud, throw out the results and appoint pro-Trump elector so they can quite literally steal the election away from Joe Biden in the state of Arizona. Watch. What was the ask during this call? He was making these allegations of fraud, but he had something or a couple things that they wanted you to do. What were those? The ones I remember were first the that we would hold that I would allow an official committee at at the Capitol so that they could hear this evidence and that we could take action thereafter. And I refused. I said up to that time, the circus, I called it the circus, had been brewing with lots of demonstrations, both at the counting center, at the Capitol and other places. And I didn't want to have that in the house. I did not feel that the evidence granted in its absence, merited a hearing and I didn't want to be used as a pawn. If there was some other need that the that the committee hearing would fulfill, so that was the first ask. That we have hold an official committee hearing. And what was his second ask? I I said, to what end? To what end the hearing? 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 the electors of President Biden and replace them. And we would we would like to have the legitimate opportunity through the committee to come to that end and and remove that. And I said, that's that's 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 are asking me to do something against my oath and I will not break my oath. Trump pressured this individual to remove the Biden electors that their state had chosen and install pro Trump electors, literally subvert the will of people in Arizona. That is insane. And we know that Trump did this. But to hear a Republican official testify under oath about how extensive this pressure campaign was should horrify everyone because Trump at this point in time can still legally run for president again after he just tried to steal an election, kill democracy effectively in the United States. Now, again, this is no liberal. Rusty Bowers endorsed Trump in 2020. He wanted Trump to win in 2020. But what he wouldn't do is steal an election by committing election fraud at the behest of Donald Trump. Now, he referenced a specific legal theory, which we've been hearing much more about. But the legal theory that he's referring to is independent state legislature theory. Now, this is a bogus legal theory that effectively would lead to authoritarianism in the United States, where state legislatures just choose who they want to be the president of the United States. As Yvette Borgia of Balls and Strikes explains, the independent state legislature theory is derived from articles one and two of the Constitution, which together state that federal congressional elections and the process of selecting presidential electors shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. Advocates interpret the word legislature literally and exclusively to mean a state's lawmaking representative body. Some claim that this gives state legislatures sweeping power to regulate federal elections from voting rights to redistricting without input from other branches of state government. In theory, legislatures could even enact rules that run a fowl of a state's own Constitution, a voter past initiative or a governor's veto. By extension, the theory prohibits state election administration officials from doing anything that legislatures do not specifically authorize. And because a state legislatures power over elections is derived from the federal Constitution, federal courts, not state courts, are supposedly the proper interpreters of whether election officials are complying with the law. So the Trump administration was pushing this bogus theory that's essentially a blank check for state legislatures to do what they want with regard to elections, to hell with the will of the people who cares how they voted. If you don't like the way that the election turned out in your state, just appoint electors of your choice override the will of the people like this theory to even call it a theory is a misnomer. But this is literally a pathway to authoritarianism, where we don't even need to have elections. We just have state legislators elect who they want to or choose who they want to unilaterally. It's truly insane. But yet this is the theory that Trump's team used and mind you, while Trump was exerting pressure on people like Rusty Bowers, Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, also emailed him and pressured him to use this bogus legal theory to appoint pro-Trump electors in order to literally override Arizona's election results. And here's why now there's so much momentum for this particular legal theory because of the reliance on federal courts, right? So there are Republicans who are trying to petition the Supreme Court to rule on the validity of independent state legislature theory. And the horrifying thing about this is it's not just being laughed out of the room. You have four Supreme Court justices, Alito, Thomas, whose wife tried to pressure Rusty Bowers to use this theory to override the will of voters on top of that, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Four members of the Supreme Court who say we want to hear a case on ISLT. We want to take this up. Now, would they say that it's legitimate? Don't know. But the fact that at least one of those Supreme Court justices has a wife who is pressuring individuals at the state level to use this theory to override the will of voters tells me that I think that at least one vote would go in the direction of authoritarianism. And that's what this is. This theory is nothing more than authoritarianism. It would mean the end of democracy as we know it, at least when it comes to choosing presidents, it's truly preposterous. Now, Trump knew that Rusty's testimony would be devastating. So what did he do? Well, he attacked him as a rhino and claimed that Bowers told him that the election was rigged. And again, I want to remind you that Bowers endorsed Trump in 2020. But now, because he's testifying under oath, Trump is calling him a rhino. And under oath, which is something that Trump has not done, Rusty Bowers is saying, actually, no, yes, Trump and I had a conversation. But I did not tell him that the election was rigged. I never said that. So who do you believe that compulsive liar or the Republican who liked Trump wanted him to win, but just wouldn't break the law, violate the Constitution and override the will of people in his state? Now, Giuliani and Trump, they pressured a lot of people across the country to do what they wanted Rusty Bowers to do. But Rusty Bowers in this next clip, it's really important because he actually is principled and he explains how this is something that he could not condone, could not do because overriding the will of the people in his state is antithetical to democracy. And even if he liked Donald Trump and wanted Trump to win, this was just too far. First of all, when the people in Arizona, I believe in some 40 plus years earlier, the legislature had established the manner of electing our officials with the electors for the presidential race. Once it was given to the people, as in Bush v. Gore, illustrated by the Supreme Court, it becomes a fundamental right of the people. So as far as I was concerned, for someone to ask me in the, I would call it a posity, there was no, no evidence being presented of any strength. Evidence can be hearsay evidence, it's still evidence, but it's still hearsay. But strong judicial quality evidence, anything that would say to me, you have a doubt, deny your oath. I will not do that. And on more than, 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 beliefs. And so for me to do that, because somebody just asked me to, is foreign to my very being, I will not do it. Look, I probably disagree with Rusty Bowers on 99.9 percent of policy issues. But what he said there, I respect. And the reason why what he said is so important is because we can't go forward as a country, literally if we don't believe and all agree on the foundational principle of democracy, choosing who's going to be the leaders of our country. And we're already losing our democracy. Democracy as it is in the United States is arguably not existent, but at least having the capability to exert the little power that we have to influence elections, to choose leaders. If we can't agree on that, then literally our country cannot go forward. So we all have to put aside our policy differences and at least come to this very basic agreement that, hey, maybe we should preserve what's left of our democracy and at least let the people choose the presidents. They're members of Congress, they're senators, but you have Republicans who are so extreme that they're fighting against that very basic principle of democracy, pushing this bogus legal quote theory to literally crush democracy in the United States. And so this is devastating testimony to Donald Trump because what he was pressuring Bowers to do was unconstitutional. It was illegal and it was antithetical to democracy. So we don't necessarily know the outcome of these hearings. It needs to end in a recommendation for prosecution. But if Merrick Garland does not prosecute Trump after having all of this evidence, then I mean, even if Trump is defeated in 2024, it's just a matter of time before a different Republican comes along and capitalizes on this authoritarian momentum that is building within the Republican Party and then democracy as we know it will be gone. You won't regret it.