Following a contentious, long-winded court row, Fulton County investigators heard testimony from one of their marque witnesses, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on Tuesday.
Graham had fought ferociously against a subpoena lodged against him for over four months, putting up a fight unlike any other witnesses in the inquiry’s crosshairs. But his efforts were dealt a death blow when the Supreme Court declined to block a lower court ruling earlier this month following myriad legal losses.
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“Today, Senator Graham appeared before the Fulton County Special Grand Jury for just over two hours and answered all questions. The Senator feels he was treated with respect, professionalism, and courtesy. Out of respect for the grand jury process he will not comment on the substance of the questions,” Graham’s office said in a statement.
Fulton County prosecutors, led by District Attorney Fani Willis, have been seeking to grill Graham on two calls he had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during the fallout from the 2020 election. They are investigating possible criminal efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 election.
During one of the calls, Graham floated the notion of rejecting mail-in ballots from locations with questionable signatures on ballots, according to Raffensperger, who has testified before the panel.
Weeks after that call, Trump called Raffensperger and underscored the need to “find” 11,780 votes, enough to overturn his 2020 election loss in the Peach State. That Trump call served as the impetus for Willis’s initiation of the inquiry. A special grand jury in the matter was impaneled in May and has assisted with rolling out subpoenas.
Trump has denied allegations of wrongdoing and hailed the call with Raffensperger as “perfect.”
Graham was subpoenaed over the summer alongside other Trump allies such as lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But he quickly moved to quash it, arguing that the debate clause in the Constitution insulates him from such subpoena demands.
He maintained that his calls with Raffensperger were part of a “legislative fact-finding” mission in his capacity as a senator. The debate clause protects legislators from certain types of law enforcement activity when conducting their legislative duties.
Prosecutors had to fight through the Fulton Superior Court for the initial subpoena and then through three levels of the federal judiciary as Graham’s legal team filed petition after petition to scrap the subpoena. Technically, he still has court challenges, but they will likely be moot after his expected testimony on Tuesday.
In September, a judge kept the subpoena intact but narrowed the scope of what the special grand jury could ask him, leaving questions about his decision-making process as a legislator off limits. He could have tried to object to certain questions, but his office claimed he answered everything posed in his appearance Tuesday.
Graham tried to halt an order forcing him to testify in a federal appeals court, pending an appeal, but he lost that bid in October. Then, the Supreme Court declined to take up his petition earlier this month, paving the way for his testimony. Graham has been adamant that he has done nothing wrong.
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Graham’s testimony follows a bevy of high-profile witnesses before the panel, including Gov. Brian Kemp, Giuliani, and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. The special grand jury cannot criminally indict on its own, but Willis can pursue a separate, regular grand jury to file criminal charges.
Willis has previously left the door open to calling upon Trump for testimony. Trump debuted his 2024 campaign last week and is also facing a slew of other investigations, including from the Justice Department with the recent appointment of a special counsel.
