The US Supreme Court has blocked a subpoena of Senator Lindsey Graham in an Atlanta case that’s investigating possible illegal interference in the 2020 election. Graham had asked the nation’s top court for a ruling and today Justice Clarence Thomas entered the block. Graham has argued that he’s protected by the U.S. Constitution’s speech or debate clause and the Supreme Court agreed. The court’s statement said that Graham can’t be questioned over his “investigatory fact-finding on telephone calls to Georgia election officials” but can be questioned about other matters, including his contact with officials on Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, has said that Graham possesses “unique knowledge” regarding the Trump campaign’s efforts to influence post-election activities in the county and elsewhere in Georgia.
Graham’s lawyers wrote an emergency application for a block to Justice Thomas who eventually has come to their aid. Here is an excerpt from Graham’s message to Thomas:
“The district court’s refusal to quash or at least stay this impermissible questioning—and the Eleventh Circuit’s cursory acquiescence, while misquoting the ‘Speech or Debate Clause,’ failing to invoke or apply the standard for a stay, and without so much as mentioning sovereign immunity—cries out for review,”
Graham’s “constitutional immunities will be lost, and his statutorily guaranteed appeal mooted, the moment the local Georgia prosecutor questions him,”
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