ATLANTA — In a recent 2024 campaign stop for Donald Trump, the South Carolina crowd booed one of their own — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Graham, who's represented the state since 2003, has had a complicated relationship with the former president over the years.
The pair have been on-again, off-again. In this cycle, the men are friends now, but Trump's fervent supporters haven't forgotten the past.
“We’re going to love (Graham),” Trump said during the early July rally, according to Politico. “I know it’s half and half. But when I need some of those liberal votes, he’s always there to help me get them. We’ve got some pretty liberal people, but he’s good. We know the good ones.”
Before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, it seems Graham tried to help Trump as the president challenged his 2020 defeat.
Graham made at least two phone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger about absentee ballots and voter fraud. The two men disagreed about what exactly happened and what was said during the conversation.
Those calls caught the attention of prosecutors in Fulton County investigating whether Trump and his allies criminally interfered in Georgia's 2020 election.
RELATED: Fulton County will seat new grand juries — and they could indict Trump over Georgia's 2020 election
Who is Lindsey Graham?
Before becoming a Trump ally, Graham was an outspoken critic.
The initial issues stemmed from Trump's comments about John McCain, the Arizona senator and a close friend of Graham.
Graham — who was elected to Congress in 1993 after a stint in the U.S. Air Force and a few years in state politics — became friends with McCain during the Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings.
Once Graham joined the Senate in 2003, the pair worked together often.
In July 2015, Trump said McCain wasn't "a war hero." Graham, who was then seeking the Republican nomination, called Trump a "jack***." In return, Trump called Graham an "idiot" and gave out the South Carolina Republican's cell phone number during a rally, CNN reported.
The relationship didn't improve until a March 2017 meeting between the pair. Graham remained a staunch Trump defender over the next few years — even as Trump took shots at McCain following the Arizona Republican's death in August 2018.
The questions about what happened to Graham and what changed came and came.
The senator said it was about staying "relevant." McCain, his old friend, played the game of politics too when reelection time came, he said.
“Well, O.K., from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” Graham told New York Times Magazine in February 2019. “I’ve got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country."
Graham was still on the president's side as 2020 ballots were being counted in Georgia.
What did Graham do in Georgia?
Graham made two phone calls to Raffensperger that caught the attention of Fulton County prosecutors. Court filings seeking the senator's testimony before a special purpose grand jury outlined the allegations.
On Nov. 13, 2020, Graham allegedly asked Raffensperger and his staff about "reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of more favorable outcome" for Trump, according to court documents.
Graham also made "allegations of widespread voter fraud," according to the filing.
Raffensperger has spoken about the Graham calls on multiple occasions.
In November 2020, Georgia's top election official told CNN that Graham implied that the state should try and throw out some absentee ballots.
“He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters,” Raffensperger said on CNN. “And then he, I got the sense it implied that then you could throw those out for any, if you look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures. So that’s the impression that I got.”
Graham denied those allegations.
In testimony to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Raffensperger testified that he was "uncomfortable" with Graham's line of questioning.
Graham mentioned a process credit card companies use to verify signatures, suggesting that a similar machine reading process be used on 150,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County, according to Raffensperger's released testimony.
"I didn't know where this was going to lead," he said. "My concern was, would you be disenfranchising voters when the ballots have already been accepted by the county process?"
Raffensperger told Graham he'd talk with attorneys at the Secretary of State's Office, but he never spoke with the senator about it again.
Graham would eventually have to talk about the calls before the special purpose grand jury that investigated potential criminal interference in the 2020 election.
The South Carolina Republican tried to avoid testifying, taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Graham testified in November 2022, and he spent just over two hours in front of jurors, according to his office.
Indictments related to the 2020 election investigation are expected before Sept. 1. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has hinted that charging decisions would come in early or mid-August.
Jury selection for the two grand juries that could hear evidence begins Tuesday.