NYT:

Six days after major news organizations declared Donald J. Trump the loser of the 2020 presidential election, his allies were applying a desperate full-court press in an effort to turn his defeat around, particularly in Georgia.

The pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell went on television claiming that there was abundant evidence of foreign election meddling that never ultimately materialized. Another lawyer, L. Lin Wood, filed a lawsuit seeking to block the certification of Georgia’s election results.

That same day, Nov. 13, 2020, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, made a phone call that left Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, immediately alarmed. Mr. Graham, he said, had asked if there was a legal way, using the state courts, to toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures.

The call would eventually trigger an ethics complaint, demands from the left for Mr. Graham’s resignation and a legal drama that is culminating only now, nearly two years later, as the veteran lawmaker fights to avoid testifying before an Atlanta special grand jury that is investigating election interference by Mr. Trump and his supporters.

Mr. Graham has put together a high-powered legal team, which includes Don F. McGahn II, a White House counsel under Mr. Trump. While Mr. Graham’s lawyers say that they have been told that he is only a witness — not a target of the investigation — that could change as new evidence arises in the case, which is being led by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga. Her efforts to compel Mr. Graham to testify have been aided by legal filings from a number of high-profile, outside attorneys, including William F. Weld, a Trump critic and former Republican governor of Massachusetts….

At the time he made the call to Mr. Raffensperger, Mr. Graham was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he has said that he was acting in his official capacity. His legal team did not respond to requests from The New York Times to provide evidence to suggest that the committee was conducting an official inquiry.

Judge May has rejected arguments that he was acting solely in his Senate capacity, and said that by Mr. Graham’s own account of the Raffensperger call, he was trying to influence state election rules rather than solely explore federal remedies. Indeed, in a television interview a few days after the call, Mr. Graham said he suggested to Mr. Raffensperger new state procedures for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots and creating an appeal process. (He also said at the time that he made similar calls to Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, another state Mr. Trump narrowly lost.)

Mr. Raffensperger’s account of his conversation with Mr. Graham — and his inference that Mr. Graham wanted to explore tossing mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures — has been backed up by one of the secretary of state’s aides who was also on the call. Even so, Mr. Graham made no overt request to discard ballots, according to another Raffensperger aide, Gabriel Sterling. Mr. Graham has said that it is “ridiculous” to suggest he was asking for votes to be thrown out.During a hearing in federal court this month, Brian C. Lea, one of Mr. Graham’s lawyers, said: “We have one phone call, and that phone call has been described by everybody. Everybody acknowledges that it is about electoral process and about verification of absentee ballots, how you ensure security.”

He said the “only dispute” was brought about by Mr. Raffensperger’s account that it was implied that legal ballots should be thrown out. “Strip away the implication that Secretary of State Raffensperger claims to have picked up, all you have is a conversation about electoral process.” Legal precedent, he argued, meant that “motive is irrelevant.”

But Judge May told Mr. Graham’s lawyers that it was critical to understand why the call was made.

“You keep saying that it’s improper for the court to look at motive, but how can I classify an act as political or legislative without knowing why the act was done?”