Fulton County Judge Orders Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham to Testify in 2020 Election Probe

Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks to media while flanked by Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell (L) and members of the Trump campaign legal team at a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington on Nov. 19, 2020. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

An Atlanta-area grand jury on July 5 subpoenaed the allies and former legal advisors of former President Donald Trump, including a sitting senator and a former mayor of New York City.

The Fulton County Superior Court of Georgia on Tuesday compelled several of the former president’s affiliates, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), to provide witness testimony before a grand jury regarding disputes following the U.S. presidential election in 2020, according to court documents filed on July 5.

The court also requested the testimony of several attornies who worked with the former president during the 2020 election lawsuits, including former law professor John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the court orders.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, first revealed her office’s probe of the former president’s advisors in February 2021 in a letter addressed to Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, in which Willis alleged that Trump’s affiliates attempted to interfere with the administration of the 2020 election.

Willis then petitioned in January 2022 that a “special purpose grand jury” be impaneled to investigate the matter. A majority of Fulton County Superior Court judges agreed to Willis’s request, according to Chief Judge Christopher Brasher.

“The Special Purpose Grand Jury is authorized to investigate any and all facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to possible attempts to disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia,” court documents containing the requests for appearance stated.

Willis said in a letter to Brasher that the grand jury was required because “a significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”

In its request for Giuliani’s appearance, the court stated that “there is evidence” that Giuliani’s testimony before Georgia’s state legislative panels on Dec. 3, 2020 “was part of a multi-state, coordinated” election interference plan by the Trump campaign.

Surveillance Footage

During the December 2020 hearing, Giuliani presented lawmakers with surveillance footage that he described as evidence of election workers feeding unlawful ballots into voting machines. The ballots appeared to be pulled from under a tablecloth. Ellis was also at the hearing.

“You cannot possibly certify Georgia in good faith,” Giuliani told lawmakers at the time.

The court, in demanding Graham’s testimony, said the senator “made at least two telephone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and members of his staff in the weeks following the November 2020 election in Georgia.”

The court continued by alleging Graham “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome”

Graham denied wrongdoing and told CBS’s “Face the Nation” in January that he asked Raffensperger “about how the system worked when it came to mail-in voting, balloting” in the phone calls following the 2020 election.

Mitchell, together with Trump, was also in a phone call with Raffensperger in December 2020, in which the former president requested Raffensperger to probe potential voter fraud, though the secretary of state’s office misrepresented the call to news outlets, resulting in corrections months later. Raffensperger declined Trump’s request, noting the state conducted several re-tallies of the vote count.

‘Perfect Phone Call’

Trump said in a January statement in response to Willis’s probe that he “didn’t say anything wrong in the call, made while [he] was President on behalf of the United States of America, to look into the massive voter fraud which took place in Georgia.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks during the American Freedom Tour at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, on May 14, 2022. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

“What this Civil Special Grand Jury should be looking into is not my perfect phone call, but the large-scale voter fraud that took place in Georgia. Then they would be doing a great job for the people. No more political witch hunts!” The former president said.

The 23-member grand jury started their investigation of the matter on May 2, 2022, according to court documents.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Giuliani, Graham, Eastman, Mitchell, Chesebro, and Ellis for comment.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.