Aug. 15 (UPI) — A U.S. district judge said Monday that Sen. Lindsey Graham must testify in front of a Fulton County grand jury as to whether former President Donald Trump broke the law in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Judge Leigh Martin May kicked the case to the Fulton County Superior Court to further hear Graham’s argument under the Constitution’s “Speech or Debate” clause in an effort to squash the jury’s subpoena.
“Because the record must be more fully developed before the Court can address the applicability of the ‘Speech or Debate’ clause to specific questions or lines of inquiry, and because Senator Graham’s only request in removing the subpoena to this Court was to quash the subpoena in its entirety, the case is remanded to the Superior Court of Fulton County for further proceedings,” May said in the ruling, according to CNN.
Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Senate’s powerful Judiciary Committee, is scheduled to appear in front of the grand jury on Aug. 23.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis leads the grand jury probe that resulted in a subpoena for Graham.
Prosecutors want to question Graham about two phone calls he made to Georgia election officials at the same time Trump pushed to have the results of the election changed with state officials.
In his court filing, Graham argued his calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger simply had general questions about the election and those helped him decide to vote to certify Joe Biden as the victor of the 2020 election.
