Lawyers representing GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) said Wednesday their client will challenge a subpoena issued by the Fulton County district attorney demanding that he testify before a special grand jury in Georgia hearing evidence in a probe of possible 2020 election interference by former President Donald Trump and others.
In a statement, Graham’s attorneys Bart Daniel and Matt Austin said the subpoena is “all politics.”
“Senator Graham plans to go to court, challenge the subpoena, and expects to prevail,” the statement said.
The South Carolina senator was one of a number of Trump allies the special grand jury subpoenaed Tuesday in connection with their efforts to undo Trump’s defeat in the state’s 202 elections.
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The grand jury was impaneled this year to assist District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into whether there were any “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections” in Georgia.
Willis dismissed Graham’s allegation that her investigation was motivated by politics, saying that “doesn’t understand the seriousness of what we’re doing.” She also said the public should expect additional subpoenas of Trump associates and indicated that she wouldn’t rule out subpoenaing Trump himself.
But Graham’s to obey the subpoena could actually end up putting Trump in even more legal liability, said former Republican Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” Wednesday.
“I wonder if there’s a sense that … there are some Republicans who might be kind of rooting for this [investigation],” anchor Joy Reid said. “I’m thinking about Mitch McConnell who said — there was this quote, this was about the impeachment, that Mitch McConnell allegedly said, and this is a quote from the book ‘This Shall Not Pass’ — ‘The Democrats are going to take care of this son of a bitch for us,’ referring to his imminent impeachment. It’s schadenfreude, because not it wouldn’t be the January 6 Committee. It would be the Black lady in Georgia.”
“Quite ironic,” replied Jolly. “You know who can help solve the threats of violence and racism? Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. He should be the first to condemn the epithets coming toward the prosecutor in Fulton County, but he’s not. He’s hiding from her. It’s almost comical how perfectly Lindsey Graham this moment is, the guy that lights the fire wants to run from it.”
“Here is the other great irony in Lindsey Graham’s behavior in this moment,” added Jolly. “You know what ultimately will lead to the subpoena of Donald Trump? Lindsey Graham’s lack of cooperation. If he said there was a legitimate legislative purpose, I wasn’t doing this on behalf of the president — if he wanted to go under oath and say that was the nature of my phone call, it gets very hard for the Fulton County prosecutor to then subpoena Donald Trump.”
He added that it would “very easy, without Lindsey Graham, for the Fulton County prosecutor to say, you know what, judge, because of the lack of cooperation of Lindsey Graham, we have reason to believe that we need to bring under oath the former president of the United States. It is perfectly Lindsey Graham, it’s all about the senior senator from South Carolina, and it’s about nobody else.”
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