“A straightforward crime”: Experts expect charges after "extraordinarily significant" J6 testimony

Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Wednesday revealed that the FBI had interviewed him in its investigation into former President Donald Trump's alleged scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"I am hesitant to talk about any subpoenas, et cetera. But I have been interviewed by the FBI," he told CNN's Kaitlin Collins when she asked whether he had been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith.

Bowers testified before the House Jan. 6 committee last year, refuting in his testimony Trump's recollection of a phone call between them during the 2020 election. Bowers told the committee that Trump and his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressured him to overturn President Joe Biden's victory in Arizona. But, according to The Hill, before Bowers' testimony, Trump claimed that Bowers had "told me that the election was rigged and that I won Arizona."

Bowers told Collins Wednesday that the FBI interview lasted four hours and took place a few months ago. He said that there was "nothing new" in what he told the FBI that he had not said in his public testimony.

"They seem to have a good grasp on all of the testimony that I've given and all of the interviews that I had given to the Arizona Republic and The Washington Post," he said.

"They were very aware of the Jan. 6th committee testimony that I gave," he added. "There may have been something that I said that was of interest. But I don't remember anything standing out that had not been mentioned before."

After testifying publicly to the Jan. 6 committee, Bowers met severe backlash from his colleagues, being censured by the Arizona GOP and called a traitor by members of his party. He also lost his race for re-election to a Trump-backed candidate last August, a few months after he testified.

Immediately after Bowers' appearance, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig told Collins that Bowers' comments added "extraordinarily significant" context to the FBI's probe, HuffPost reports.

"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. That would be what you would do with someone who's not resisting you," said Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney.

"This tells us that this is about more than Georgia," Honig added, pointing out 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 legal team.

Honig also dubbed Bowers 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," Honig said.

The special counsel in recent weeks has increasingly focused on the fake elector plot, which longtime Trump adviser Boris Ephsteyn previously defended as "alternate electors" in the event that Congress blocked the certification of Biden's win.

"It is not alternate electors. It is fraudulent electors," former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman told MSNBC on Wednesday. "It's people that sign pieces of paper saying, 'My state, has made me an elector and I'm for Trump,' when exactly the opposite has happened. So, Epshteyn has been a figure here and a very controversial one. He's been responsible for a lot of lawyers abandoning ship.

"But, yeah, it seems clear from the state level and now to the sort of circle around Trump, that people were very earnest about having false electors," he continued. "That is just a straightforward crime of defrauding the United States and probably a wire fraud as well. I agree, that is a very good statement for them to use if they call him to the stand."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Smith's team has reportedly interviewed and subpoenaed a range of people in connection to the federal investigation, including Giuliani and election officials in Arizona and Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating Trump and his allies' alleged efforts to undermine the state's election.

Former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg told MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday that at least part of the special counsel's timetable in the case "is informed by what Fani Willis is doing in Georgia," noting that Willis has indicated that she will file charges in her investigation at "the end of July, early- to mid-August."

"I think you can also look at the fact that they have amassed evidence from, really, Donald Trump's inner circle," Greenberg continued. "We know that his campaign officials, Gary Michael Brown has been in the grand jury, Michael Roman apparently is cooperating. He was the director of Election Day operations. State officials in all the background states. You've got, potentially, Mark Meadows, White House counsel, Mike Pence. You know, if you have this inner circle, you're really, I think at that point, nearing the end of the investigation."