Flashback: A Pressure Campaign in Arizona to Overturn the 2020 Election Results

Arizona has become the latest state to indict allies of former President Donald Trump in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Seven people connected to Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign were charged in the felony indictment announced April 24, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani. So were 11 state Republican electors who claimed to the federal government that Arizona’s electoral votes had been won by Trump and not Joe Biden. Many of those indicted in connection with the Arizona effort, which has been described as a “fake electors” scheme, denied the charges or said the charges were motivated by politics. Trump himself is not charged in the Arizona grand jury indictment, and is referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The Arizona “fake electors” scheme and the pressure campaign surrounding it were a focus of FRONTLINE’s recent documentary Democracy on Trial.

In the above excerpt from the film, Rusty Bowers, a longtime Arizona Republican who supported Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, shared a candid account of being on the receiving end of a pressure campaign on local officials following Trump’s loss. Bowers, who was then speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, described a phone call before his state’s certification of Biden’s victory in which Trump and his then-lawyer Giuliani asked Bowers to swap in electors for Trump, citing cases of voter fraud for which they could provide no evidence.

“Well. For them to say to me, ‘Yeah, we just want you to throw out those electors and put in Trump’s,’ I’m thinking, ‘Have I gone to another planet?’ I mean, it’s like, ‘What? I’m not gonna do that!’” Bowers told FRONTLINE. “I wanted him to win, okay, so what? … I’m not gonna cheat to win.”

Read & Watch: FRONTLINE’s Extended Interview with Rusty Bowers

As the excerpt recounted, soon after the call, Giuliani and his associates arrived in Arizona and met with Bowers in person. When Bowers pressed them to provide proof of their voter fraud claims, Bowers told FRONTLINE Giuliani grew frustrated.

In what Bowers describes as “a rocket’s red glare moment,” he recalled Giuliani saying, “‘You know, we’ve got a lot of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.’”

Bowers was incredulous: “Like, wow, you gotta be kidding,” he said. “This is the clown show — they’re out hunting, they’re trying to find something, and they’re wanting us to participate in this, and he says that? Holy moly, we can’t do this stuff, you know?”

Giuliani refused to answer questions about his conversations with Bowers before the Jan. 6 committee.

The names of Giuliani, Meadows and other Trump associates were redacted in the Arizona indictment, though a Giuliani spokesperson confirmed he was among those charged and criticized the indictment as political. Giuliani and Meadows have pleaded not guilty in a separate Georgia case involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Former President Trump has pleaded not guilty as well to charges in the Georgia case, and to three federal conspiracy charges and one federal obstruction charge brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith. That case includes the Arizona “fake elector” and pressure campaign allegations.

Read: A Guide to the Criminal Cases Against Donald Trump

In their filings for the federal case, Trump’s lawyers have argued that he’s absolutely immune from prosecution for actions taken while he was president — an argument the U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing.

Democracy on Trial is available to watch in full at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App, on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel and on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.