A special grand jury has subpoenaed several members of Donald Trump’s inner circle to testify as part of a criminal investigation into alleged interference with the 2020 election. Senator Lindsey Graham is one of them.
Several individuals of Trump’s legal team, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Jenna Ellis, were also served subpoenas about the South Carolina Republican’s conversations with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in November 2020.
According to the subpoena, Lindsey Graham may have been trying to “explore the prospect of a more favorable conclusion” for Trump when he questioned the legitimacy of some absentee ballots cast in Georgia.
The inquiry, headed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, focuses on the phone call in which the former president requested Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes and examines if Trump violated any laws in his efforts to reverse the state’s 2020 election results.
In the weeks following the election in November 2020, Lindsey Graham called Raffensperger and his staff at least twice to discuss the potential for tossing certain mail-in ballots in Georgia, claims a petition submitted by Willis.
Graham’s expected testimony is crucial, according to the prosecution, since it’s likely to turn up “new sources of information” about the inquiry.
Graham has previously discussed the phone conversation he had with Raffensperger in the days following the November 2020 election.
The House Select Committee’s probe on January 6 and the investigation in Georgia, according to Graham, are both political in nature and are “using the law to try to knock Trump out of running” for president once more in 2024.
In November 2020, Lindsey Graham refuted claims that he was attempting to get absentee ballots annulled so that Trump would defeat Joe Biden.
In an interview with The Washington Post in November 2020, Graham claimed that Trump had not requested that he get in touch with Raffensperger.
“If he [Raffensperger] feels threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem,” Graham added. “I actually thought it was a good conversation.”
Trump has repeatedly denied any misconduct, praising his meeting with Raffensperger in January 2021 in which he asked him to “find” votes and calling the probe into him a “witch hunt.”