SC’s Graham subpoenaed to testify in front of a Georgia grand jury over 2020 election calls
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has been subpoenaed by a Georgia grand jury investigating potential criminal inference in the state’s 2020 election.
A Fulton County grand jury judge on Tuesday ordered Graham and other Trump advisors — Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick Deason — to testify in front of the grand jury July 12.
Graham’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
On Wednesday, Bart Daniel and Matt Austin, attorneys for Graham, said the senator plans to challenge the subpoena.
“This is all politics,” both said in a statement. “Fulton County is engaged in a fishing expedition and working in concert with the Jan. 6 Committee in Washington. Any information from an interview or deposition with Sen. Graham would immediately be shared with the Jan. 6 Committee.”
In the days following the 2020 election, Graham called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger twice to ask him if there was a way to throw out mail-in ballots, which were favoring President Joe Biden, according to the subpoena, first reported Tuesday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes over former President Donald Trump, who has continued to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen. His own attorney general, Bill Barr, has refuted those claims, repeating as recently to a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that there was no evidence that widespread fraud took place.
In January 2021, Trump also called Raffensperger, urging the Republican secretary of state to find enough votes to reverse the outcome of Georgia’s election. The grand jury investigation was launched after a recording of the call was leaked.
According to the subpoena, Graham asked Raffensperger and his staff “about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome” for Trump.
On the call, Graham allegedly asked Raffensperger about signatures that did not match on absentee ballots and whether all mail-in ballots in counties with a high rate of mismatched signatures could be thrown out.
In those calls with Raffensperger’s office, the subpoena referenced false allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election in Georgia, which were consistent with public statements made by the Trump campaign.
Graham, a staunch Trump ally, has previously denied the accusations.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday that the special grand jury has already heard from witnesses who had direct contact with Trump and his associates. Those subpoenaed are among a group of close Trump allies who worked closely with the former president on changing the outcome of the election.
One of those associates, Eastman, a law professor who also spoke at Trump’s rally hours before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, proposed a plan for former Vice President Mike Pence to throw out electoral votes from key swing states and deny Biden a majority in the electoral college. That proposal never took effect.
“The numbers don’t lie,” Raffensperger told the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot last month. “At the end of the day, President Trump came up short.”
Reporter Nick Wooten of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer contributed to this article.
