Judging Freedom - Sen. Lindsey Graham must appear before a grand jury

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, October 21st, 2022. It's about 1.50 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. As most of you know, certainly those of you who are regular viewers of Judging Freedom know, one of the many criminal investigations of President Donald Trump, and this one is not federal, is taking place in Atlanta, Georgia. And it's being run by Fannie Willis, who is the county prosecutor for the county, I think it's Fulton County, Georgia, in which the city of Atlanta sits. The allegation is that the president, or it was then the president, orchestrated a scheme to submit the names of false electors to Washington, D.C. What's an elector? Well, an elector is a person sent by the state to the electoral college. Each state has the same number of

electors as it has representatives in the entire Congress. So Wyoming, which has one member of Congress and two senators, has three electors. Georgia, which has 14 members of Congress and 14 members of the House and two senators, has 16 electors. The electors are chosen by popular vote every November. So Georgia goes to Biden, then the 16 electors are pledged in the Electoral College to vote for Biden. Texas goes for Trump, and you have 27 electors, 25 members of the House and two senators. Those 27 electors are pledged to vote for Trump. That's the way the system works. Famously in 2000, there were more popular votes for Al Gore, but more electoral votes for George W. Bush and thus he became president.

Okay, that's the background. That's the law. The history in this case is that suddenly 16 people showed up in Atlanta and said, we're the true electors. And of course, they weren't. They were pledged to vote for Donald Trump. And the papers that they signed were an act of perjury. It is alleged that this was orchestrated by Rudy Giuliani. I don't know what the evidence is against him, but it is alleged that he did that. And it is alleged that the president knew about it and promoted it.

Okay, that's the background. One of the people who spoke to the Georgia election officials in an effort to get them either to recount the vote or to reject the Biden electors with Senator Lindsey Graham. Senator Graham, at the time the Republicans controlled the Senate, he was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He claims that his conversation with the Georgia election officials was part of an investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee of what the heck went on in Georgia. Who won? Did Biden win by 11,779 votes or did Trump really win? Was there a suppression of the Democratic votes by the white establishment in Georgia? Did somebody cheat and cause Biden to win when he didn't win.

This is what didn't really win. This is what Senator Graham says he was investigating. When his name showed up on the telephone logs, District Attorney Willis sent a subpoena to Senator Graham. Well, grand jury sent the subpoena. She asked the grand jury to send it, commanding his testimony. He said, I'm not showing up because the speech and debate clause. Ah, what's that? The speech and debate clause is a clause in the Constitution which says that members of Congress, House of Representatives, and the Senate shall not be compelled to answer for their speech and debate on the floor of the Senate or the House, and they shall not be interfered with on their way to the Capitol building and on their way from it. The courts have expanded that to apply to

committee work as well. So if a member of Congress, in this case a senator, says something at a committee meeting in public, he can't be compelled to answer for it. Why did you say it? What's the basis for your information? He can't be interrogated for it. Senator Graham wanted to extend the speech and debate clause to a private telephone call, and a federal judge said no. And he appealed it to the 11th Circuit. The 11th Circuit said, well, the subpoena is really very broad. So we're going to instruct you, federal district court judge, to narrow the subpoena so that the speech and debate clause is not interfered with. So he's not asked anything about what he said on the floor of the Senate or at a Senate committee meeting. She did. The federal judge recrafted the subpoena so that it was limited just to his phone calls to the Georgia election officials, not to anything he said at the Senate Judiciary Committee or on

the floor of the Senate. Senator Graham appealed again to the 11th Circuit. Last night, the 11th Circuit rejected the appeal and ruled that he must testify. Now, almost the same thing has happened to Rudy Giuliani. He filed his appeal in a state court. The state judge said, come on down, Mayor. And he has already testified. He didn't go through the multiple appeals to a federal appellate court the way Senator Graham did. I would imagine Senator Graham, and he and I have been friends for a long time, is not very happy about this. But appealing to the Supreme Court, he knows he's a lawyer. He's actually a judge in the military, would be fruitless. So expect to see him walking into that courthouse one day soon and walking out

three or four or five hours later, not being very happy about it. But this is what happens when you get involved in something that the government is investigating or when you witness it. You could be a person innocently standing on a street corner and you see a shooting or a bank robbery or an automobile accident. The government finds out about it. You're a witness. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything to enter the event. You just observed it. The government is entitled to your testimony. Senator Graham is now finding that out. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.