- Prosecutors asked a federal judge to reject Sen. Lindsey Graham's appeal and require him to testify.
- The argument he used to avoid testifying in a Georgia election interference case "defies the facts," prosecutors wrote.
The argument Sen. Lindsay Graham used to try to avoid testifying in front of a grand jury investigating election interference in Georgia "defies the facts," the state's district attorney argued in court documents filed on Monday.
"The Senator's extreme position defies the facts, this Court's holdings, Supreme Court precedent, and the interests of the public," prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Graham was asked to testify before a Fulton County grand jury about calls he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in November 2020 to encourage him to question absentee ballots.
The investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis focuses on alleged efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to pressure Georgia officials to help overturn the 2020 election of President Joe Biden.
Graham's lawyers had argued that he can't be forced to testify because he has "absolute immunity" under the US Constitution's speech and debate clause, which bars asking lawmakers about their "legislative functions." But a federal judge rejected that claim.
A federal appeals court then gave Graham a reprieve from testifying and sent the proceedings back to a lower court to determine if he should be exempt from answering particular questions because of his status as a sitting lawmaker.
Prosecutors asked that Graham's motion be denied, arguing that Graham repeats the same arguments that "each and every possible topic of grand jury inquiry is forbidden."
Graham's own statements fail to establish a legislative purpose to the conversation, the district attorney argued.
"Senator Graham explicitly told reporters that he had tried to persuade Raffensperger to adopt a different method of signature verification, one which the Senator preferred to the method being used at the time in Georgia," the filing states. "He went further to say that he wanted to discuss how Raffensperger could make the process 'better,' explicitly not for some future legislative purpose, but to alter either the ongoing recounts or the upcoming Senate runoff elections."
A spokesperson for Graham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.