Peril

Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa['s] book, “Peril,” describes parallel efforts by [Lindsey Graham] and his conservative colleague from Utah, Sen. Mike Lee, to personally investigate the president’s claims of voter fraud as the lawmakers prepared to certify Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.

[...]

Graham dispatched his driver to deliver [documents purporting fraud given to him by Rudy Giuliani] to his top lawyer on the Judiciary Committee. The lawyer, Lee Holmes, was unimpressed, according to the account in “Peril.”

[...]

“Holmes could find no public records that would even allow someone to reach these conclusions,” according to the account in “Peril.” [...] Where he could find relevant records, they contradicted Giuliani’s conclusions.

[...]

Graham and Lee, both of whom ultimately voted to certify the results, took the claims of election fraud seriously enough to get briefed on the details, involve their senior staff and call state officials throughout the country. But privately, Graham gave the arguments a withering assessment, according to the book, saying they were suitable for “third grade.”

The episode illustrates how strenuously the president’s legal team sought to nullify the results of the election; how flimsy even their more serious claims were; and what little stock the president’s own allies placed in his objections, even as they stood steadfastly with their standard-bearer.

[...]

Graham had already proved himself willing to act on assertions of election irregularities, calling Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in November to see if he could toss mail ballots in counties found to have high rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger later said. Graham maintained he was only inquiring about the state’s signature-matching requirements.

[...]

But it wasn’t until after a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol that Graham, speaking on the Senate floor, said, “Count me out. Enough is enough. I’ve tried to be helpful.”

He has since tacked back, visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago, speaking to him regularly and saying the GOP “can’t grow” without the former president. Still, he has continued to deliver criticism directly to Trump, according to the book. In a phone call this summer, he bemoaned Trump’s volatility and focus on voter fraud, telling the former president, “You f---ed your presidency up.” Trump abruptly hung up on him.

[...]

The same day Graham met with Giuliani in the West Wing, Lee received a two-page memo from the White House marked “PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL.” It included a stunning claim [from legal scholar John Eastman] — that Vice President Pence could hand the election to Trump because seven states had submitted dueling slates of electors to Congress, split between the incumbent and Joe Biden.

[...]

Document in hand, and bewildered that theories about dueling electors were still coming from Trump’s legal team, Lee made “phone call after phone call” to officials in some of the relevant states, such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona, he told constituents in a Jan. 27 online town hall, appearing to refer to the Eastman memo without naming its author.

[...]

Lee, for his part, said in a Fox News interview a month after the Jan. 6 riot that Trump deserved a “mulligan” for the speech he delivered encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol, using a golf term for giving someone another try.

  MSN

Fuck no.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.