Sen. Lindsey Graham testifies before Fulton County grand jury for two hours
Sen. Lindsey Graham testifies before Fulton County grand jury for two hours
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Sen. Lindsey Graham has testified for the first time before a Fulton County grand jury regarding his role in the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey.
The senator told the grand jury that he had no idea that the letter he sent to Comey was being withheld from Congress.
“And if I had an awareness of it, would that have changed my reaction to this, the fact that I knew that my decision to send a letter, which I know was coming in the near future, was being withheld from you?” he asked.
Graham’s office released an email with a similar request from Comey to President Trump, who was not the recipient of the letter, back in September.
“I don’t know what is in the email, but I am telling you this, I never saw it until yesterday,” Graham said.
He was asked by the prosecutor how he could have known there was a letter to Trump, given he did not know then that it was being hidden from Congress.
“Well, I knew that we would not talk to the FBI director until after the election, and so that letter became my notification that I wanted to go ahead and get a special counsel appointed, and so this was just a very prudent decision,” he said.
The judge presiding over the case, Judge Mary Jacobson, said she would let Graham have the opportunity to respond to the grand jury’s questions, and would make her decision after that.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was doing what I believed to be the right thing,” said Graham about sending the letter to the president.
He said sending the letter came after the fact, while he was “somewhat” sure Comey’s statement about what the president had said would be a “perfectly fair quote,” given he was “talking about the president in a political context.”
“We thought it was more appropriate that we should be part of the investigation of his communications with the Russians that led up to firing Comey.”
Graham said this
