Georgia grand jury recommended charging Lindsey Graham, two other GOP senators in election case
A Georgia grand jury that investigated Donald Trump recommended criminal charges against three of his Senate allies: Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, according to the panel’s report released Friday.
Besides those senators, the Fulton County special grand jury, which couldn’t issue indictments, recommended charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, lawyer Lin Wood and Trump aide Boris Epshteyn. The grand jury cited a statute alleging commission of a crime without specifying the offense.
The special grand jury recommended charges against all 16 Republican alternate electors who met to support Trump despite President Joe Biden winning the state. Only three electors were indicted with Trump: Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and Cathy Latham.
The report also recommended charges against election lawyer Cleta Mitchell for allegedly influencing a witness’s testimony, making false statements, soliciting election fraud and interfering with election duties.
But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis didn’t bring charges against any of those people when a grand jury handed up an indictment against Trump and 18 others in August. The special grand jury report acknowledged that Willis would seek indictments only with sufficient cause.
“Furthermore, this grand jury contained no election law experts or criminal lawyers,” the special report said. “The majority of this grand jury used their collective best efforts, however, to attend every session, listen to every witness and attempt to understand the facts as presented and the laws as explained.”
Graham, of South Carolina, who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 2020, told reporters Friday that he was concerned about the potential for criminalizing his work as a lawmaker. Graham said he called officials in Georgia and other states to ask about the 2020 election. He didn’t find evidence of mass voter fraud but said he had concerns about mail-in ballots in Georgia and elsewhere.
“This is troubling for the country,” Graham said of the grand jury report. “You can’t criminalize senators for doing their job when they have a constitutional requirement to fulfill.”
Loeffler said in a post on social media site X she makes no apologies for representing her state and giving voice to millions of Americans who felt disenfranchised in 2020.
“Trying to jail your party’s leading political opponent ahead of 2024 is election interference,” Loeffler said.
Trump blasted the report as having “ZERO credibility” in a post on Truth Social.
“Essentially, they wanted to indict anybody who happened to be breathing at the time,” Trump said. “It totally undermines the credibility of the findings, and badly hurts the Great State of Georgia, whose wonderful and patriotic people are not happy with this charade of an out of control ‘prosecutor’ doing the work of, and for, the DOJ. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”
The special grand jury investigated Trump from June to December 2022. A partial report from the panel released in February had recommended perjury charges against some witnesses but found no widespread election fraud that Trump had alleged.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney released the full report.
A Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump and 18 co-defendants Aug. 14, charging them with racketeering in a wide-ranging conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. The 41 charges span allegations of false statements to public officials, impersonating presidential electors and tampering with Coffee County election equipment.
All 19 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee scheduled a trial Oct. 23 for at least two of the defendants: Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.
McAfee is still considering when and how to try the rest. At least five of the defendants have asked to move their case to federal court, where U.S. District Steve Jones is considering their request.
In contrast to the indictment against Trump and his allies, the special grand jury report didn’t detail why it was recommending charges. The report simply listed names of potential targets and the statutes that they may have violated.
Perdue and Loeffler were Georgia’s Republican senators, who campaigning for reelection with Trump in 2020, but both lost their races. Others, such as Flynn and Epshteyn, were advisers to Trump.
Mitchell, a longtime Republican campaign lawyer, participated in Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to “find” enough votes to win the election.
Flynn attended a White House meeting Dec. 18, 2020, with Trump and other defendants in the criminal case to argue that Trump could use the military to seize voting machines, according to the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. The meeting is cited in the indictment with the attendance of lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who are co-defendants.
