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FILE – Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., speaks at the South Carolina Republican Party Dinner in Columbia, July 29, 2022, where SC Graham invited former President Donald Trump’s former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who spent his last week in federal court in Atlanta as part of the legal team fighting a subpoena for Graham (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard, file)
Prosecutors in Atlanta told lawyers for Rudy Giuliani on Monday that he was the target of their criminal investigation into possible unlawful attempts by then-President Donald Trump and others to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 election.
Another Giuliani attorney, Robert Costello, said special counsel Nathan Wade warned Giuliani’s local attorney in Atlanta that the former New York City mayor could face criminal charges. The New York Times first reported the disclosure.
The revelation that Trump’s lawyer Giuliani was the target of an investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis brings the probe closer to the former president. Willis has said she is considering calling Trump himself to testify before a special grand jury, and the former president has hired a criminal defense attorney in Atlanta.
Law enforcement scrutiny of Trump’s conduct is escalating. The FBI raided the Florida home last week as part of an investigation into whether he brought classified records from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. He also faces a civil investigation in New York alleging that his company, the Trump Organization, misled banks and tax authorities about the value of its assets. The Justice Department is investigating a Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn an election he falsely claims was stolen.
Giuliani, who spread false allegations of election fraud in Atlanta’s Fulton County as he led efforts to overturn the state’s election results, will testify Wednesday before a special grand jury at Willis’ request. composition.
Also on Monday, a federal judge said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham must testify before a special grand jury. Prosecutors said they wanted to ask Graham about calls they said he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffinsburg and his staff in the weeks after the election.
Willis’ investigation was sparked by a phone call between Trump and Georgia Raffinsburg. In that conversation in January 2021, Trump suggested that Rafensberg “find” the votes needed to reverse his narrow loss in the state.
Willis filed a petition last month in an attempt to pressure seven Trump associates and advisers to testify. Because they don’t live in Georgia, she had to use a process to ask a judge in their state to order them to appear in court.
In a petition seeking Giuliani’s testimony, Willis confirmed he was both Trump’s personal attorney and his campaign’s lead attorney. She wrote that he and others appeared at a state Senate committee meeting and showed what Giuliani said was a video showing election workers producing illegal ballots from unknown sources out of sight of election poll observers. “suitcase”.
Within 24 hours of the hearing on Dec. 3, 2020, Rafensberger’s office debunked the video. But Willis wrote that Giuliani continued to make statements to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings alleging widespread voter fraud using the debunked video.
Her petition said there was evidence that Giuliani’s hearing and testimony were “part of a coordinated multistate plan by the Trump campaign to influence the outcome of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.”
Two election workers seen in the video, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, said they faced relentless harassment both online and in-person during Georgiani’s Dec. 3 hearing on Georgia state legislation. At another hearing a week later, Giuliani said the video showed the women “sneaking around USB ports as if they were vials of heroin or cocaine.” They are actually passing a piece of candy.
Willis also wrote in a petition calling for the testimony of attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who worked with Giuliani to coordinate and execute a lawsuit that had Georgia Republicans acting as fakes. voters’ plans. Those 16 people signed a certificate declaring falsely that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Joe Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors was certified.
All 16 fake voters received letters saying they were the target of the investigation, Willis said in a court filing last month.
Graham’s attorney, RS.C., argued that his position as a U.S. senator shielded him from appearing before the panel. But U.S. District Judge Ray Martin May wrote in an order Monday that immunity related to his role as a senator does not protect him from testifying. Graham’s subpoena requires him to appear before a special grand jury on Aug. 23, but his office said Monday that he plans to appeal.
Graham had argued that a provision of the Constitution provided absolute protection against senators being challenged for legislative actions. But the judge found “considerable areas of potential grand jury investigation” beyond the scope of the rule. The judge also rejected Graham’s argument that the doctrine of “sovereign immunity” protects senators from being subpoenaed by state prosecutors.
Graham also argued that Willis, a Democrat, did not exhibit the special circumstances necessary to compel senior officials to testify. But the judge disagreed, arguing that Willis displayed “special circumstances and special needs” for Graham’s testimony on alleged attempts to influence or disrupt Georgia’s election.
Judge May last month rejected a similar attempt by U.S. Rep. Jody Hayes (R-Ga.) to avoid testifying before a special grand jury.
Graham’s office said in a statement Monday that the senator disagreed with the judge’s interpretation of the constitutional provision, which he believed protected him from questioning by state officials. His lawyers said he was conducting an investigation as part of his legislative duties involving voting certification and election-related legislative proposals.
But the judge wrote that this ignores “the individuals on the call who publicly suggested that Senator Graham was not merely involved in legislative fact-finding, but implied or implied that Georgia election officials were changing their procedures or otherwise potentially changing the state’s result in the fact.”
In a phone call shortly after the 2020 election, Graham “asked Ravensberg and his staff whether to re-examine certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia,” Willis wrote in a petition. , to explore the possibility of an outcome favorable to former President Donald Trump.”
Graham also “referenced allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 Georgia election, consistent with public statements made by prominent affiliates of the Trump campaign,” she wrote.
State election officials, both Republican and Democrats nationwide, courts and even Trump’s attorney general have found no evidence of voter fraud enough to affect his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
When Congress meets on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump-aligned lawmakers plan to challenge statistics from several battleground states to justify results under the Election Counting Act, but after the Capitol attack that day, Georgia State statistics have never been questioned.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called his appeal to Ravensberg “perfect.”
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