“The Court finds that the District Attorney has shown extraordinary circumstances and a particular need for the testimony of Senator Graham on matters relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the legal administration of the 2022 election in Georgia,” said writes the judge.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) requested a special grand jury earlier this year. It began meeting in June and has identified over 100 people of interest. The panel has already heard testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and his staff, Georgia Attorney General Christopher M. Carr (R), state lawmakers and local election officials.
Graham is of interest to the committee for the phone calls he made to Raffensperger about the Georgian electoral system. Willis claims Graham made several phone calls to Raffensperger and his team after the election asking them to review some absentee ballots “to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump.” .
Graham’s office had no immediate response Monday.
Graham’s attorneys have previously said their client’s calls for reconsideration of specific mail-in ballots after Trump’s loss were not an effort to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. proceedings in Georgia, his lawyers wrote in court documents filed in South Carolina in July.
Graham’s legal team is led by former Trump White House attorney Donald McGahn.
Willis named Graham, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in her investigation of various people allied with Trump over what she considered “a multi-state plan coordinated by the Trump campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election by Georgia and elsewhere”.
Willis launched the investigation in the weeks following the Trump campaign and his allies called on Georgia officials seeking to overturn the election results. The case covers some of the issues examined by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection and the Justice Department investigation examining efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. But Willis, 50, has been at the forefront publicly prosecute a criminal case, in part because it is able to take advantage of state laws that legal experts say could make a criminal prosecution faster and less cumbersome than a federal case.
She subpoenaed more than three dozen people, including a group of Republicans from Georgia whom she identified as targets of the criminal investigation for their role as Trump’s so-called voters.