Rudy Giuliani and Lindsey Graham Just Got Subpoenaed in Trump Investigation

A special grand jury in Georgia investigating former President Trump’s potentially criminal efforts to flip the 2020 election subpoenaed key members of Trump’s inner circle including South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday. 

Others summoned to testify include controversial lawyers John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, attorney and conservative pundit Jacki Pick Deason, and former legal advisers Cleta Mitchell and Kenneth Chesebro, according to court documents reviewed by VICE News. 

The new wide-ranging subpoena blast suggests the prosecutor driving the criminal investigation of Trump’s team, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, is digging deep and intends to leave no stone unturned. 

The subpoenas, first reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, were returned Tuesday and signed by local judge Robert McBurney. 

Giuliani worked as Trump’s personal attorney and played a high-profile role in attempting to flip the 2020 election in Trump’s favor while spreading baseless rumors of voter fraud. Willis’ petition to the judge for a subpoena specifically references Giuliani’s appearance in front of the Georgia State Senate on Dec. 3 of that year. 

At that event, Giuliani showed a video of “election workers at State Farm Arena in Atlanta that purported to show election workers producing ‘suitcases’ of unlawful ballots from unknown sources,” the court filing says. 

The document notes this video evidence was quickly debunked by an investigation led by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, but that Giuliani kept bringing it up anyway. 

Willis has previously said her office is investigating potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting “the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies” along with other possible crimes. 

The petition to subpoena Graham mentions “at least” two phone calls made by Graham to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and members of his staff during the weeks after the 2020 election. The calls were “about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” the document says.  

Willis has said she is examining whether to apply the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as Georgia RICO, to the Trump team’s attempts to reverse his 2020 electoral defeat in the state, according to a letter Willis circulated to local state officials and an on-the-record interview she gave to the New York Times. 

President Joe Biden carried Georgia by a wafer-thin margin of just 11,779 votes. Willis’ investigation began after Trump called Raffensperger on Jan. 2 and urged the state official to help Trump “find” enough votes to win. The call was tape-recorded and then leaked to the media, including the Washington Post.

“All I want to do is this,” Trump told Raffensperger. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.”

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