Several ethics experts have called for an investigation into South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham over his communications with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The call for Graham to be investigated came days after Raffensperger claimed that Graham was interested in seeing if he could discard legal mail-in ballots in an effort to flip the state in President Trump’s favor. Graham denied the state official’s allegations, calling them “ridiculous” despite one of Raffensperger’s staffers corroborating his version of events, according to CNN.
Walter Shaub, a former top ethics watchdog, Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer during former President George W. Bush’s administration, and Claire Finkelstein, the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, sent a letter to Senate Ethics Committee Chairman James Lankford and Vice Chairman Christopher Coons on Wednesday.
“We further urge the committee to investigate whether Senator Graham suggested that Secretary Raffensperger disenfranchise Georgia voters by not counting votes lawfully cast for the office of president,” they wrote. “Finally, your Committee should demand clarity as to whether Senator Graham has threatened anyone with a Senate investigation of the Georgia vote tally and or taken steps to initiate such an investigation.”
When asked if he was worried about potentially facing an ethics investigation, Graham said, “No, not at all,” according to CNN.
“I get accused of everything. I’m just going to keep being me,” he said in the Capitol. “I called up the secretary of state to find out how you verify a signature and what database you use because I think it’s important that if we’re going to vote by mail, we get it right.”
Graham previously told the Washington Examiner that he asked similar questions about how signatures are validated on ballots to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and to an elections official in Nevada. The letter addressed the admission, saying, “It is not clear why Senator Graham thought that claiming he repeated the alleged misconduct would serve as a valid defense.”
“Secretary Raffensperger’s account describes undemocratic conduct incompatible with service as a senator, much less as a committee chairman,” the letter added.
Raffensperger, a Republican, has faced repeated attacks from Trump, his campaign, and members of his own party for not falling in line. The president has called him a “RINO,” an acronym for “Republican in name only.” Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, who is representing the president’s legal team in the state, accused the secretary of state of siding with Democrats by not forcefully pushing allegations of widespread voter fraud. Raffensperger has called the Georgia House representative a “liar” and a “charlatan.”
While major news outlets declared Joe Biden the president-elect over a week ago, Trump has not conceded the race. The Trump campaign has alleged widespread voter fraud and irregularities that cast doubt on the real victor, although it has not provided proof to support the claims. The campaign has filed a handful of lawsuits in different battleground states since Election Day and has had limited success thus far.
