- Newly released court documents show who else Georgia’s grand jury recommended be indicted in the sweeping case of election fraud
- Graham had called Georgia’s secretary of state after the election
- It is unclear why he and the others were not charged
The Fulton County grand jury recommended charges against Lindsey Graham in Georgia‘s election case, new court filings showed on Friday.
Jurors also recommended charges against Michael Flynn, who had served as National Security Adviser to Donald Trump, and Georgia’s two former Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
Also named were Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and lawyers Lin Wood and Cleta Mitchell, the report showed.
The original indictment against Trump and 18 additional co-defendants included details involving 30 ‘unindicted co-conspirators‘ – people who Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis alleges took part in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
Graham, the Republican senator from Georgia who was a staunch Trump ally, in the weeks after the 2020 election had made calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Raffensperger has said he interpreted questions about whether he could reject certain absentee ballots as a suggestion to reject legally cast votes.
Graham has said, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was interested in cases of possible voter fraud. He’s denied any wrong doing.
‘I was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and had to vote on certifying an election,’ Graham told reporters this summer. ‘This is ridiculous. This weaponization of the law needs to stop. So I will use the courts. We will go as far as we need to go and do whatever needs to be done to make sure that people like me can do their jobs without fear of some county prosecutor coming after you.’
Graham fought against testifying before the Georgia grand jury and was ultimately orded to do so by the Supreme Court.
The grand jury spent seven months hearing from some 75 witnesses before finishing a report in December with recommendations for Willis on charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The special grand jury did not have the power to issue charges but Willis used the evidence it gathered to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.
Perdue, who lost his Senate run-off election in January 2021 while Trump was falsely claiming he won the presidential election, personally urged Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to convene a special session of the legislature to help Trump’s quest to overturn the election.
Loeffler, who also lost her runoff election in January 2021, was at that meeting.
Flynn also was compeled to testify before the grand jury.
In mid-December 2020, Flynn told a right-wing news channel that Trump ‘could take military capabilities’ and place them in swing states and ‘basically re-run an election in each of those states.’
Flynn also met at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, with Trump, attorney Sidney Powell and others associated with the Trump campaign for a meeting that ‘focused on topics including invoking martial law, seizing voting machines, and appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate the 2020 election,’ Willis wrote in her document asking Flynn to testify.
And he attended meetings in November 2020 at the South Carolina home of conservative attorney Lin Wood. Wood also testified before the grand jury. He had been seeking ways to influence election results in Georgia.
Boris Epshteyn also testified before the grand jury. He served as a lawyer for Trump and the request for his testimony said that he ‘possesses unique knowledge concerning the logistics, planning, and execution of efforts by the Trump Campaign to submit false certificates of vote to former vice president Michael Pence and others.’
Cleta Mitchell advised Trump on a phone call with Georgia state officials after the 2020 election in which he urged them to find evidence that could overturn the state’s results.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the partial release of the report in February but declined to immediately release the panel’s recommendations on who should or should not be prosecuted. The judge said at the time that he wanted to protect people´s due process rights.
McBurney said in a new order filed Aug. 28 that the due process concerns were moot since a regular grand jury has indicted Trump and 18 other people under the state’s anti-racketeering law. All have pleaded not guilty.
The parts of the report previously released in February included its introduction and conclusion, as well as a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that one or more witnesses may have lied under oath and urged prosecutors to seek charges for perjury. The panel´s foreperson had said in news interviews that the special grand jurors had recommended that numerous people be indicted.
The newly released court documents on Friday also mention jury concerns about being lied to: ‘A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed 15 by one or more witnesses testifying before it. The Grand Jury recommends that the 16 District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is 17 compelling.’