Sen. Lindsey Graham a no-show at scheduled Fulton County court appearance

ATLANTA, Ga. (CBS46/AP) - U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham did not show up to his scheduled appearance on Wednesday at the Fulton County courthouse.

Graham was subpoenaed to testify to a special grand jury that’s investigating whether Donald Trump and others broke any laws when they tried to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in 2020.

The senator is one of the Trump allies who Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wants to question as part of her investigation into what she alleges was “a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”

Graham said previously that he would fight a subpoena and he still has the ability to do so if he so chooses.

Graham’s attorneys say that the probe by Willis is politically motivated.

Graham was ordered to testify before the Special Purpose Grand Jury on Aug. 2. The petition also states that the State of Georgia will pay all reasonable and necessary travel expenses and witness fees requited to secure his attendance and testimony.

On Monday, the FBI executed a search of Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, which is also a private club, as part of the federal investigation into whether the former president took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence, people familiar with the matter said. It marked a dramatic escalation of law enforcement scrutiny of Trump, who faces an array of inquiries tied to his conduct in the waning days of his administration.

Trump and his allies quickly sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from winning another term in 2024 — though the Biden White House said it had no prior knowledge and current FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump five years ago.

Trump, disclosing the search in a lengthy statement late Monday, asserted that agents had opened a safe at his home, and he described their work as an “unannounced raid” that he likened to “prosecutorial misconduct.”

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