FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Rudy Giuliani, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and several members of the Trump legal team have been ordered by a Fulton County judge to testify before the special grand jury examining the former president's efforts to overturn Georgia's election results in 2020.
The additional lawyers being required to give testimony include Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell and Jacki Deason.
The court orders, obtained by 11Alive's Joe Henke on Tuesday, indicate testimony will be required before the special grand jury on July 12.
All of the attorneys except for Deason have previously been subpoenaed by the U.S. House Jan. 6 Committee. Giuliani, Eastman and Chesebro have additionally been subpoenaed in a Justice Department criminal investigation on the "alternate" electors scheme in which Republicans in several states, including Georgia, submitted illegitimate electoral college votes in favor of former President Donald Trump.
The order for Graham relates to December 2020 phone calls to Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger in which the South Carolina senator, according to the order, "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" for Trump.
The order asserts Graham made at least two such calls. One was reported in Nov. 2020 in The Washington Post, in which the senator allegedly asked Raffensperger whether he "had the power to toss all mail ballots" in certain counties if their signature match rates were worse.
The Post characterized it as Graham appearing to "suggest that (Raffensperger) find a way to toss legally cast ballots," a characterization that the secretary said "sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road."
Graham at the time called that interpretation "ridiculous."
See the Lindsey Graham order:
Giuliani's order focuses on a Georgia Senate hearing held in early December 2020 on election fraud, in which he and several other proponents of fraud narratives spent hours at the Georgia Capitol speaking to members of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
Eastman's, Ellis' and Deason's order also focuses on that hearing. The chairman of that subcommittee, ex-state Sen. William Ligon, has also been subpoenaed in Fulton County.
The court order highlights Giuliani's presentation of the now-infamous State Farm Arena video, which he purported at that time to show "suitcases" of fraudulent ballots being pulled out from under tables after most election workers, observers and media left on election night due to a misunderstanding about whether counting was done.
It resumed at the urging of state and local officials, and surveillance video from inside the arena of the early-morning hours counting was seized on by election conspiracists in Georgia and became a recurring fixation of Trump's.
Full surveillance video showed the "suitcases" were normal ballot containers, as Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling said at the time and testified to the Jan. 6 Committee last month, and that the election workers were conducting normal activity.
"There is evidence that (Giuliani’s) appearance and testimony at the hearing was part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere," the court order states.
See the Rudy Giuliani order:
The "alternate elector" plans - in which members of the Georgia Republican Party met at the state Capitol on December 14, 2020 to submit the illegitimate electoral college votes for Trump - appear to be the focus of Chesebro's order, as well as part of Eastman's.
The court's order said Chesebro was involved in the "coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 individuals meet at the Georgia State Capitol on December 14, 2020 to cast purported electoral college votes in favor of former President Donald Trump, even though none of those 16 individuals had been ascertained as Georgia’s certified presidential electors by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp."
It adds Eastman and Chesebro "drafted at least two memoranda in support of this plan, which were provided to the Georgia Republican Party, and... provided template Microsoft Word documents to be used by the Georgia Republican Party at its meeting on December 14, 2020."
Mitchell's order indicates Willis is looking for her insight into a now-infamous phone call Trump made to Raffensperger in early January 2021, days before the sacking of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
In that call, Trump was recorded asking Raffensperger to "recalculate" the Georgia vote count because "I just want to find 11,780 votes."
That was the number of votes the then-president trailed Joe Biden by in Georgia.
The Fulton County special grand jury began hearing testimony last month. Figures including Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr have already testified.
Others, including Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, Cobb County Elections Director Janine Eveler, and a Trump documentarian, Alex Holder, have been subpoenaed for testimony.
See the additional orders