The special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia that recommended charges against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates also recommended the indictment of South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham as well as Georgia Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
The revelation of the additional charging recommendations was discovered after the full grand jury report was publicly released on Sept. 8.
Graham, Perdue, and Loeffler were recommended for charges in connection with the alleged “national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, focused on efforts in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia,” according to the report.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis so far has declined to bring charges against the trio.
Less than two weeks after the 2020 election, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the Washington Post that Graham, who served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was one of several officials who called to press the SoS office about the state’s signature matching laws for mail-in ballots.
According to Raffensperger, Graham asked whether the SoS office had the ability to disregard mail-in ballots in counties found to have higher rates of mismatched signatures.
Raffensperger characterized Graham’s efforts as seeking to discard legal ballots, a claim that Graham told the Post was “ridiculous.”
Nothing in Georgia law prevents federal officials from pressing state officials about the vagaries within election law.
“If he feels threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem,” Graham said. “I actually thought it was a good conversation.”
Perdue lost his Senate run-off election in January 2021 as tension over whether the election was stolen or not were at their highest. He was among many who urged GOP lawmakers to object to the Electoral College certification process on Jan. 6, 2021, just as many of his Democratic colleagues had done in years prior when they contested Republican wins.
“I’m encouraging my colleagues to object. This is something that the American people demand right now,” he said at the time. “You heard in the last section [of the show] that there are huge irregularities in Georgia. They need to be investigated. And they need to be corrected, in my opinion.”
Loeffler testified before the special grand jury last fall after hundreds of her text messages surfaced, chronicling correspondence about efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
As a Trump ally, she planned to vote against the election’s certification, until the riot at the U.S. Capitol unfolded on Jan. 6, which she called “abhorrent.”
“When I arrived in Washington this morning, I fully intended to object to the certification of the electoral votes,” she said during a speech that day. “However, the events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider, and I cannot now in good conscience object to the certification of these electors.”
