Wednesday morning’s edition of Politico Playbook includes a pretty funny excerpt from Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidmanin’s upcoming book titled “Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election.” Best to print it verbatim:
“After fighting a four-month legal battle all the way to the US Supreme Court to block his grand jury subpoena – and losing – South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham turned on a dime ‘and threw Trump under the bus,’ according to a source familiar with his testimony. According to secret grand jury testimony in Fulton County confirmed by the authors, Graham testified that if you told Trump ‘That Martians came and stole the election, he’d probably believe you.’
“He also suggested to the grand jurors that Trump cheated at golf. After Graham was finished testifying, he bumped into Fani Willis in a hallway and thanked her for the opportunity to tell his story. ‘That was so cathartic,’ he told Willis. ‘I feel so much better.’ Then, to the astonishment of one source who witnessed the scene, South Carolina’s senior senator hugged the Fulton County DA who was aggressively pursuing Trump. Willis’s reaction: ‘She was like “whatever, dude.”‘
Recall that the very same special grand jury Lindsey had testified to ended up recommending he be indicted for calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asking him to find a way to toss legal ballots and hand the Peach State to Trump in November 2020 – something that Donald himself was recorded doing about a month and half later. It’s not clear whether Willis’s office had declined to charge him on the merits or if they thought it would be too much hassle to put him on trial given the Speech and Debate clause. Either way it’s pretty goddamned funny that a “cathartic” moment nearly got him charged with criminal conspiracy. And that he “threw Trump under the bus” before trying to get back in Donald’s good graces last year with an endorsement.