Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham has been in a bit of trouble recently, but he actually got a minor
victory yesterday when an appeals court ruled that the South Carolina senator can have a chance to
challenge the order that he got to testify in the Georgia election fraud case because of protections
for lawmakers under the Constitution, speech or debate clause. Graham has been ordered to,
based on a subpoena that he got appear tomorrow to talk about the calls he made to Georgia election
officials in the wake of the 2020 election. And this is all part of an investigation,
seemingly not so much into Graham, but into the person who was in charge of the entire
scheme. And that is, of course, Donald Trump. And first, Graham and his lawyers were saying
that what he did with his phone calls to people like Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger,
they were simply part of his job duties as a U.S. senator because as a lawmaker,
it's important that he is able to make sure that the election systems in all the different states
are on the up and up. But then that argument was quickly turned down because, of course,
Graham represents South Carolina, not Georgia. So why is the election process in Georgia any of his
business? It's not. And that's why that argument was turned down. But fast forward and Graham filed
an emergency request with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, asking it to put
the subpoena on hold while his appeal played out. And now the appeals court has ruled it wants both
sides to argue what areas of questioning would be appropriate for a U.S. senator, a sitting
U.S. senator, especially. And so there's going to be a stay. This was supposed to happen tomorrow,
and it's not going to happen as was initially planned. Graham's attorneys say that he will
suffer irreparable harm if forced to appear before his appeal concludes, which may be true,
but I think it's going to be irreparable harm in the form of Trump and Trump voters,
including the voters of South Carolina, which is quite a red state, and they may not be so happy if
Graham decides to spill the beans on Trump in this testimony. And the district attorney's office,
as you might imagine, is getting sick of Graham's delay tactics. They've been going on for weeks and
weeks now. The office is saying that Graham is crucial to the investigation and that he
is expected to provide information regarding additional sources of relevant information.
It is true that if he has to eventually testify, then he may just decide to be obstinate,
like he may just plead the fifth a bunch of times as we recently saw Donald Trump do and a different
investigation. But if he decides to ignore this thing altogether after being forced into
delivering a testimony, maybe he'll open himself up to criminal charges. So I think
he will at least cooperate in some way if it's determined that he has to, because Graham loves to
just grovel to whoever has influence and authority over him at any given moment. Like for a while,
that person seemed to be John McCain. The two were inseparable. Right. And then, of course,
became. Passed away. So that put an end to that relationship. And then Graham, when he ran for
president in 2016. Trump dox them so you'd think that that would put Graham on opposing sides
to Trump like you wouldn't be a Trump fan after that. But then eventually Graham came around to
liking Trump being one of his lackeys because Trump became the figurehead of the Republican
Party. So what else could he do? He had to grovel at his feet. And then after January 6th, it looks
like the party and especially the politicians in power were moving away from Donald Trump. So what
did Lindsey Graham do? He made this big speech on the night of January six talking about how this
was unacceptable and him and Trump had had this long road, but that was over with. And Joe Biden
and Kamala Harris legitimately won the 2020 election. And then it only took a few weeks,
maybe a couple of months before he decided to go back to groveling at Donald Trump's feet, because
he knew that the party and the constituents were not ready to move away from Trump.
And so that's Lindsey Graham for you. If he just realizes that, hey, these prosecutors in Georgia,
they have the goods on me and they have authority over me right now. He's going to
decide to change his ways. Ultimately, though, if they're not able to get Graham to testify,
I don't think that this is going to change the course of the investigation. If they want to
charge Donald Trump in this, they seem to have a rock solid case. I mean, they have that phone
call with Raffensperger where Trump asked for the 11,280 votes and all these other calls and
repeated attempts, like if they want to get Trump on this, it seems like they can, but you might
as well try to make it an even more rock solid case. And that's why they're trying to get Graham
on board with this, too. But at least for now, Graham's able to fend off the order to testify.