Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is facing calls to resign and may be at risk of being prosecuted after he got caught trying to interfere with the election results in multiple states, including Georgia, on behalf of President Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, Graham actually contacted Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to suggest that legal votes be tossed in a scheme that would help Trump, who lost the state to President-Elect Joe Biden by several thousand votes.
“I just assumed he was calling about the two runoffs for the senators so I called him back and then during our discussion, he asked if ballots can be matched back to the envelope, the absentee ballots,” Raffensperger, a Republican, said. “I explained in our process after it went through two sets of signature match, at that point [the ballots and envelopes] were separated.”
“But then Senator Graham implied for us to audit the envelopes and then throw out the ballots for counties who had the highest frequency error of signatures,” Raffensperger continued. “I tried to help explain that because we did signature match, you couldn’t tie the signature back anymore to those ballots. Just like if you voted in person, my name is not on my ballot and so it can’t be tied back to me.”
Trump has been falsely claiming that Georgia did not perform any signature matching and has declared that the election result in the state should be overturned based on that claim. But Raffensperger made it clear that Trump is lying and that Graham tried to interfere with Georgia’s process.
Of course, Graham denied that he did any such thing.
“That’s just ridiculous,” Graham said in remarks to the press. “If he feels threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem. I actually thought it was a good conversation.”
A “good conversation” does not include trying to persuade the top elections official in a state to throw away legally cast votes to help the loser of an election stay in power.
Besides, it turns out Raffensperger has witnesses to back up his recounting of the call.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
After an initial conversation, Mr. Graham called back again and brought up the idea of invalidating absentee ballots from counties with higher rates of signature errors, Mr. Raffensperger said, adding that he had staffers with him on that call.
Mr. Raffensperger and his staffers agreed not to act on any of Mr. Graham’s suggestions, he said. “We have laws in place,” he said.
If that’s not enough to warrant an investigation and prosecution, it turns out that Graham has openly admitted that he has also stuck his nose into elections in Arizona and Nevada as well, telling “a group of reporters in the capitol that he’s also spoken to Secretaries of State in Nevada and Arizona” because he’s “a senator who is worried about election integrity,” Politico reported.
If Graham cared about election integrity he would tell Trump the race is over and that he should concede instead of filing frivolous lawsuits to overturn what even Republican officials have called the most secure election in history.
What Graham is doing is inappropriate and likely illegal. He is trying to subvert democracy by suggesting to state elections officials that they bow to Trump and toss votes, thereby giving Trump “proof” to continue his election fraud allegations.
It makes one wonder if Graham called up the South Carolina Secretary of State to gain an advantage in his Senate race against Democratic opponent Jaime Harrison. That should most certainly be looked into since he will clearly stoop to undemocratic lows to keep the GOP in power.
Featured Image: Wikimedia Commons
