WASHINGTON — Senator Lindsey Graham said he has retained former White House counsel Don McGahn to fight off a subpoena in a Georgia probe of former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
“He’s a really good guy in this area,” the South Carolina Republican told reporters at the Capitol. “I’ve known him, he’s a good choice.”
Graham has been trying to avoid testifying before a special purpose grand jury in Fulton County investigating Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
Graham, a staunch Trump ally, filed a motion to quash the subpoena in a South Carolina federal court.
Graham made two phone calls to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the weeks following the election, according to the July 5 subpoena. At the time, Raffensperger said publicly that he believed Graham was urging him to find a way to throw out legitimately cast mail-in ballots. Graham has denied that.
McGahn, Trump’s former White House counsel, is no stranger to these kinds of battles, having fought a subpoena from congressional Democrats seeking to force him to testify about Russian interference during the 2016 election.
That matter resulted in several legal setbacks for the House and a two-year legal stalemate that ended with no clear-cut legal victory for either side.
McGahn ended up testifying behind closed doors after an agreement on what could be asked was hashed out in negotiations between McGahn attorneys, the House Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department under President Joe Biden.
