Lindsey Graham – Trump’s friend in trouble

A few days ago, Raffensperger told the Washington Post and CNN that he felt increasing pressure from fellow Republicans to find ways to exclude votes.

Lindsey Graham, widely known as a supporter of President Donald Trump, was accused of apparently pressuring Raffensperger to invalidate the votes.

Here’s how the phone call should have been: Graham is said to have asked about state laws regarding ballot signatures and whether political views may have caused poll workers to accept mismatched ballots.

Only these can persuade Trump

Graham is also said to have asked if the Home Secretary had the power to invalidate all mail ballots in counties with a high incidence of mismatched signatures.

Raffensperger told CNN that Graham suggested he “look closely” at the ballots that could be rejected to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia.

– Asked if the ballot papers could match those of the voters. I had the feeling that it indicated “then you can throw them away.” That’s the impression he gave me, he told the television channel.

Criticism hails

It wasn’t long before the reactions hit the assembly line.

The Guardian writes that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called Graham’s alleged approach “insane and illegal,” while Congressman Hakeem Jeffries apparently asked everyone the question:

– Did Lindsey Graham expose Georgia’s Home Secretary to illegal pressure to rig the elections? The Ministry of Justice should find out.

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the Citizens’ Ethics and Accountability watchdog, called Graham’s approach to government officials “deeply shocking and undemocratic.”

– Senator Graham, as a Trump supporter, tried to gather votes for him, but used his position to do so. It seems unusual and highly inappropriate, Bookbinder said according to the New York Times.

Bookbinder’s criticism also appears in The Guardian, noting here in particular that Graham is the head of the Senate Justice Committee, the committee charged with overseeing the country’s legal system.

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The Senate Ethics Committee has also received a complaint. Three top ethicists, and critics of Trump according to CNN, filed a complaint against the senator, urging the committee to investigate whether Graham asked Raffensperger not to count valid votes in the election.

Walter Shaub, former federal government ethics sponsor, Richard Painter, chief ethics advocate for President George W. Bush’s administration, and Claire Finkelstein, director of the Center for Ethics and Legislation at the University of Pennsylvania, ask the committee to investigate the telephone conversation now discussed.

– That a leader of the justice commission propose to an Interior Minister that he abstain from counting legal votes threatens the electoral process and damages democracy, they write in the complaint.

Unexpected return after 28 years

All three also want clarity on whether Graham has threatened to use the Senate to investigate the vote count in Georgia. As Graham chairs the Justice Committee, they are also calling for him to be declared incompetent on all matters related to the alleged voter fraud in the presidential elections.

However, legal experts have stated that it is doubtful that Graham’s actions could lead to an indictment or that they represented a violation of the Senate’s ethical line. Still, it appears that Graham has crossed an ethical line, the New York Times wrote before the complaint came in.

– They hate me

Not worried

In an interview Monday night, Graham denied that he was proposing that the home secretary cast legal votes.

– If you feel threatened by that conversation, then you have a problem. I think it was a good conversation, said Graham, who called the accusations ridiculous.

On Wednesday, he told CNN that he was not concerned about a tag investigation.

-They accuse me of everything, I’ll just continue being me, he said.

It has also emerged that he has conducted a similar investigation in Arizona and Nevada, two states where Biden won. He maintains that he is interested in protecting the integrity of the vote by mail, but has not done the same in the states where Trump won.

– We look at states where there is competition, Graham said when faced with this.

On Thursday, the senator signs Twitter that “he must do something right when the most radical liberal politicians and the media call for my resignation.”

Count the votes

At the moment, the counting of votes in the state is coming to an end. Georgia’s election officials are working hard to manually recount five million votes.

The deadline for counties to complete the counting and review of votes is 05.59 on Thursday morning Norwegian time.

The state, which has not voted blue since Bill Clinton won the presidential election in 1992, gave Joe Biden the victory. He was 14,000 votes ahead of his rival.

Countless votes have been discovered during the referendum, but they are not enough to affect the outcome of the elections in the state. If Trump won Georgia, he wouldn’t have much to say for Biden anyway, who will have surpassed the magic number: 270 voters.

State electoral authorities have consistently defended the vote counting and have stated that they hope the count will confirm the results. They have recognized that violations or errors may occur and have committed to investigating any case.

– We have not seen a great electoral fraud. We know there will be illegal votes, but it will be a few hundred, not many thousands, said the leader of the Georgia election, Gabriel Sterling.

Kicked safety stop

This year’s presidential election has been described as the safest in history, and so far no evidence has been presented to back up Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud. Since Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump has maintained that he is the rightful winner if only “legal” votes are counted.

It sparked strong reactions among top Democrats when Trump yesterday fired senior security official Chris Krebs, the head of the U.S. cybersecurity agency, for saying the presidential election was conducted without cheating.

Svein Melby, a senior investigator for the Department of Defense Studies (IFS), told Dagbladet that he is concerned about what could happen in the weeks leading up to Biden’s inauguration. However, he was not surprised by the shot.

“Trump is now firing anyone who tells the truth, like Krebs did, or complicates his desire to make it as difficult for Biden as possible,” Melby said.