By Richard Ruelas | Arizona Republic
One said he felt justified declaring himself an elector and attempting to throw Arizona’s votes to former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election because of the unprecedented questions surrounding how ballots were cast and counted.
Another said she thought that signing the documents empowering herself to cast Arizona’s electoral college votes for Trump was merely a backup plan.
A third said he was fulfilling his duty as an elector.
But none would detail exactly how they and the other official Trump electors came to sign a document that was sent to Congress with a false avowal that they constituted Arizona’s official vote in the Electoral College.
That document, and recent revelations from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, raise new questions about how the group was organized and how the false document came to exist.
Interviews and text messages previously obtained by The Arizona Republic have detailed how White House officials and Trump campaign officials extensively pressured Republican leaders in Arizona to take other steps to dismiss the results of the general election after Joe Biden’s win.
A Republic report in December documented how Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani repeatedly spoke with Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and asked him, in vain, to replace the state’s electors — the people who were bound to certify Biden’s win.
