Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) on Wednesday added “extraordinarily significant” context to the federal investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to CNN legal analyst Elie Honig.
During an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Bowers said he was interviewed for hours several months ago as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the former president’s interference in the election.
“For four hours he’s met with the FBI. And this means that Jack Smith and his team are looking at Rusty Bowers as a witness,” Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney, told Collins. “That would be what you would do with someone who’s not resisting you.”
“This tells us that this is about more than Georgia,” Honig added, noting that “this is the first and I think best indicator that Jack Smith is looking at this as a coordinated, multistate effort by Donald Trump” and his attorneys.
Honig said Bowers comes across as a “really good witness.”
“He’s credible, he’s backed up by the other evidence, he’s relatable. So I imagine Jack Smith and his team are looking at him the same way,” he said.
In recent months, Smith’s team has reportedly interviewed or subpoenaed a host of people connected to Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after his 2020 election defeat, including Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Georgia and Arizona election officials.
Smith’s office indicted the former president last month on 37 felony counts in a separate case linked to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.