Donald Trump may be using blackmail to get South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham to help push unfounded claims of election fraud, a columnist is suggesting.
Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post columnist and political commentator, took to Twitter to suggest that Graham may be guilty of obstruction of justice for his recent controversial actions to insert himself into the ongoing vote recount battle in Georgia. He suggested that authorities could clamp down on Graham in order to target potential criminal wrongdoing from the president, also adding Trump could be using coercion in order to get the senator to join the fight over fraud allegations.
“Lindsey Graham: Obstruction of justice. Maybe they can get him to flip on Trump, or, um, flip on Trump unrelatedly, for trying to blackmail him,” Weingarten tweeted .
While it was not clear if the columnist was making a direct accusation against the president, he is not the first to suggest that Trump may be using some kind of blackmail against his former political adversary. The senator was once one of Trump’s harshest critics on the right, frequently warning against nominating him during the 2016 Republican primary and warning that it could ruin the GOP if he became the party’s nominee. But since Trump’s election, he became one of his most fervent backers, regularly taking on the president’s opponents. In the past weeks, he has joined in saying that the election may have been stolen.
As The Inquisitr reported, author and Trump critic Don Winslow claimed last year that sources in the Department of Justice told him that Trump was blackmailing Graham.
“Have you wondered why @LindseyGrahamSC has been defending @realDonaldTrump like his life depended on it? A friend in federal law enforcement told me about a certain threat @realDonaldTrump has made to Graham,” Winslow wrote on Twitter . “It’s personal. It’s awful. And it’s working very well.”
Weingarten also passed along claims that Graham may have committed a felony through his actions in pushing the allegations of voter fraud. As CNN reported, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that the South Carolina senator called him last week, suggesting that he find a way to get rid of legally cast ballots. When he denied the accusations, Raffensperger stood firm, saying on Monday that Graham had asked if ballots could be matched back to voters.
Raffensperger has bucked some members of his own party, insinuating that the request was improper and maintaining that there has been no evidence of fraud found throughout his state’s recount.
