Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mike Lee (R-UT) reportedly weren’t impressed by the “evidence” of voter fraud then-President Donald Trump’s cronies had privately presented to overturn the 2020 election results.
According to the Washington Post’s reported excerpt of “Peril,” a new book by WaPo reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Graham met with then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on January 2 to discuss what the attorney claimed to be information that would nullify Trump’s defeat.
“Give me some names,” the GOP senator reportedly told Giuliani. “You need to put it in writing. You need to show me the evidence.”
Upon receiving memos from Giuliani on January 4 regarding “Voting Irregularities, Impossibilities, and Illegalities in the 2020 General Election,” Graham, who was serving as the Senate Judiciary chair at the time, reportedly had top committee lawyer Lee Holmes vet the documents.
The memos were rife with evidence-free claims, several of which wound up in Trumpland’s lawsuits that were ultimately tossed out of court, according to Woodward and Costa, and ultimately Holmes “found the sloppiness, the overbearing tone of certainty, and the inconsistencies disqualifying,” according to the book.
Graham reportedly derided in private Giuliani’s “third grade” level arguments for undoing the election.
On the same day as Graham’s meeting with Giuliani, the White House sent Lee a memo claiming that then-Vice President Mike Pence could throw the election to Trump by discarding electors from the seven states that had submitted “dueling slates of electors,” according to Woodward and Costa.
“Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected,” the memo, penned by conservative legal scholar John Eastman, reportedly asserted.
Lee then made “phone call after phone call” to officials in the states Trump’s legal team had been targeting, such as Georgia and Pennsylvania, Woodward and Costa reported. The Utah senator’s inquiry ultimately didn’t go anywhere either.
Graham and Lee voted to certify the election results in the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, but not before the South Carolina senator had reportedly suggested that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger throw out ballots that came from counties with higher numbers of signatures that didn’t match.
Both nevertheless carried his water and refused to hold him accountable for his actions when the opportunities presented themselves.
Lee then made “phone call after phone call” to officials in the states Trump’s legal team had been targeting, such as Georgia and Pennsylvania, Woodward and Costa reported.
Well, that tells us a fat lot of nothing. What was the purpose of the calls? What was discussed? Who was spoken to? What did they say?
Sheesh.
And yet they drank the Kool-Aid and publicized bogus lies. The January 6th Insurrection is on them and every other Republican who was so concerned about keeping their job that they did not do their job - even though they took an oath:
Senate Oath of Office
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Oh well, they’re only words, sort of like guidelines, and not to be taken literally. Right…?
It’s the last two words in this phrase that really need to be struck, as they’re mis-used all the time.
All you have to do is redefine anyone who disagrees with you as a domestic enemy, then you’re perfectly within your duties and obligations under your oath.
What pathetic desperation from the lot of them! Would that they had souls to care about real world needs.