Donald Trump was so desperate to defend election fraud claims that he would have believed aliens stole ballots, his close ally and senator Lindsey Graham reportedly told a jury.
In an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, five of the 23 members of the Fulton County grand jury provided details of eight months of testimony into the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
“He said that during that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots, that Trump would’ve believed it,” said a grand juror, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about Mr Graham’s testimony.
Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, opened an investigation based on Mr Trump’s January 2021 phone call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. The Republican president asked him to “find” the 11,780 votes needed to beat the then Democratic candidate Joe Biden in Georgia.
Part of the grand jury report was released last month.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr Trump said to the secretary of state during that call. “Because we won the state.”
Over the course of eight months, grand jurors heard from 75 witnesses, among them high-profile Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Mr Graham of South Carolina. Top Georgia officials, such as secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and governor Brian Kemp, also appeared before the panel.
Mr Trump, who generally refused to accept Mr Biden won the November 2020 election, seemed particularly bothered by his loss in Georgia and what he saw as a failure of Republican state-elected officials to fight for him.
A reliably Republican-voting state, Georgia tilted to Mr Biden, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since 1992.
