Arizona was a frequent topic during hearings held four years ago by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol — and an Arizona congressman allegedly tied to its planning is now running for the GOP nomination for governor.
Rep. Andy Biggs was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee, and his name shows up repeatedly in its final report issued in 2022.
Then Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) questioned former state House Speaker Rusty Bowers during a June hearing:
“Did you also receive a call from U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona on the morning of January 6?”
“I did,” replied Bowers. “And (Biggs) asked if I would sign on both to a letter that had been sent from state, and/or I that would support the decertification of the electors. And I said I would not.”
Biggs came up again at the next hearing two days later.
“Witnesses told the select committee that the president considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals connected to the president,” said then Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).
Kinzinger played a montage of deposition tapes, including witness Cassidy Hutchinson, who said Biggs and other Republican congressmen sought a pardon. The former White House aide also testified some of those congressmen were at a Jan. 6 planning meeting.
At another hearing weeks later, then Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) counted Biggs among the group.
“According to White House visitor logs obtained by the committee, members of Congress present at the White House on Dec. 21 included Congressman Brian Babin, Andy Biggs,” Murphy said.
Biggs' response
Biggs didn’t testify before the January 6th committee and told KJZZ he was never actually served with a subpoena, though he made public statements at the time indicating he had no plans to comply with the committee’s request.
“As far as I can tell, and talking to my attorneys, I was never served with a subpoena,” Biggs said. “So when they say all this crap that they say, I just find it interesting because it's taken a life of its own on there, because the people who ran the committee, they were willing to say or do anything, whether it was accurate or not.”
But Biggs did support the president’s efforts to question the results of the 2020 election, ultimately voting not to certify the results of Arizona and other states’ presidential elections.
Rep. David Schweikert, who is now facing Biggs in the Republican gubernatorial primary, also voted against certifying Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential results, though he voted to certify Arizona.
His unflinching loyalty to President Donald Trump got Biggs the president’s endorsement in the upcoming Arizona governor’s race, where polling shows he is the frontrunner to win the GOP nomination and challenge incumbent Katie Hobbs.
In an interview with KJZZ, Biggs denied many of the allegations made during the committee hearings, including claims that he asked Trump for a pardon.
“And the bottom line is I had nothing to do with J6,” Biggs said.
He also denied putting pressure on anyone to de-certify the election, saying he only asked Bowers to sign a letter backed by other Republican legislators seeking to delay certification.
But Biggs dodged questions about the purpose of that letter. And he still won’t say who he thinks won the 2020 election. He called it a silly question when asked by reporters earlier this year.
“And the reason I say that is this, when I’ve been asked that I said, ‘you know what? You know who was sitting in the White House for four years? It was Joe Biden,” Biggs said.
Does any of it matter?
Exit polling in 2022 by NBC found Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake by winning a majority of independent and moderate voters. It also showed Hobbs won 76% of voters who believed Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
But last November, an Emerson College poll found only 9% of Arizonans thought threats to Democracy were the most important issue facing the state, trailing immigration and the economy.
Tyler Montague, an East Valley Republican activist and frequent Biggs critic, acknowledged that Jan. 6 is not as fresh in voters’ minds as it was four years ago. But he said the issue could still matter in Arizona, where the last governor’s race was decided by less than one percentage point.
“Who's it an issue with? Swing voters, OK, your college-educated traditional Republican voters,” Montague said.
Montague accused Biggs of being “a significant mover of election fraud conspiracies,” including those that were easily debunked like a misleading claim that Republican poll watchers were being blocked from going into a Detroit tabulation center.
He accused Biggs of pivoting away from conspiracy theories after election deniers like Kari Lake lost several high-profile statewide races.
But Montague said Biggs’ past positions should be disqualifying for a candidate for governor, because Biggs either believed unproven conspiracy theories about election fraud or purposely spread misinformation to score political points.
“If you believe them sincerely, your analysis, you're not smart enough to be our leader, and if you're cynical enough to lie to people about it, to win the primary, because you can win the primary in the Republican side, you're not honest enough to be our leader,” Montague said.
Biggs said he doesn’t want to look back at the past.
Instead, he says he wants to move forward and promised to do that as governor by signing Republican-backed legislation he argues will improve voter confidence.
“I want to make sure that we have the best elections so that everybody, regardless of party, can say I feel comfortable about the election, win, lose or draw,” Biggs said.
He said only journalists and Democratic politicians — not voters — care about 2020.
“I've done meetings with 300 people, where I'm taking questions for an hour, and you know what? Not once have I been asked about the 2020 election, not once,” Biggs said.
But, for many voters and public officials in Arizona, 2020 won’t go away, because there’s someone else who won’t let that election fade into the past: Trump, whose endorsement catapulted Biggs to the front of the pack in the Republican gubernatorial primary.
The president’s fixation on his loss to Biden has prompted multiple ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits seeking to validate debunked election fraud conspiracies.
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