What to Know About the Georgia Grand Jury Subpoenaing Trump Allies, Including Rudy Giuliani and Lindsey Graham

A Georgia special grand jury examining Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the state's 2020 election results has issued subpoenas for testimony from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and other allies of the former president.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney signed off on the subpoenas, which were also issued to members of Trump's legal team, including attorneys John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report.

Trump lost the popular vote in Georgia — which has historically been a reliably red state — to Democrat Joe Biden, and almost immediately began to pin his loss on fraud, all while pressuring officials there to "find" votes in his favor.

The AJC reports that the 23-person special grand jury probing the former president's pressure campaign on Georgia elections officials has heard testimony in recent weeks from a "parade of witnesses, including some who had direct contact with Trump and his associates in late 2020 and early 2021."

The subpoenas issued this week, however, bring jurors closer to Trump, via some of his closest allies.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said her team is looking into communications Graham had with Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger after the election in that state.

The subpoena cites a November 2020 phone call Graham made to Raffensperger, in which he inquired about "reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump."

A phone call between Trump himself and Raffensperger (in which Trump told the secretary he wanted to "find 11,780 votes" for himself) is also being looked into by Georgia prosecutors, Willis has said.

Giuliani's subpoena, meanwhile, notes that he appeared before the Georgia state Senate in December 2020 and made "statements, both to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings, claiming widespread voter fraud in Georgia during the November 2020 election and using the now-debunked State Farm Video in support of those statements."

That video — which was also cited by Trump himself — purports to show election workers bringing suitcases of false ballots for Biden into the State Farm Arena, and then running them through the machines multiple times. But the reality was far less nefarious, with state investigators who reviewed the surveillance tapes saying the "suitcases," were just the standard ballot containers issued by the country, and the election officials were just undertaking "normal ballot processing."

Since the false claims, though, the former Georgia polls worker featured in the video testified in front of the Jan. 6 House Select committee, detailing the threats they received after the video was widely shared by Trump and others.

"I've lost my name, I've lost my reputation, I've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people, starting with 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani, deciding to scapegoat me and my daughter, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen," one of those workers, Ruby Freeman, told the committee.

In a statement shared by Independent reporter Andrew Feinberg, attorneys for Graham said the senator intended to challenge the subpoena. According to the attorneys, Graham has been informed that he "is neither a subject nor target of the investigation, simply a witness."

The statement called the probe "all politics" and "a fishing expedition," accusing Fulton County prosecutors of "working in concert with the January 6 Committee in Washington."

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While dismissive of the bipartisan committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, Graham was openly angry about the riots that day and Trump's own role in them, telling his Senate colleagues that night in an agitated speech: "Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh, my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he's been a consequential president. But today, the first thing you'll see, all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough."

Eastman, who was also subpoenaed in the Georgia probe, has become a central figure in the House investigation into the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riots. A memo obtained by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa showed Eastman had written a detailed plan to attempt to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the 2020 election results on Jan. 6.

When Pence did not, Trump spoke before a crowd of his supporters, saying: "Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you."

He then implored his supporters to walk to the U.S. Capitol, where Congress was counting electoral votes for Biden. The group did march to the Capitol, ultimately breaching the building in a deadly scene that forced the evacuation of lawmakers — including Pence himself.

"I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them," Trump said. "Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong."