Klobuchar on Graham’s defense of 2020 election efforts in Georgia: ‘Come on now’

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Sunday pushed back against claims from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that getting involved in a state election process is consistent with the job of a U.S. senator.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” Klobuchar refrained from commenting explicitly on Graham, noting that prosecutors decided not to move forward with an indictment against him and that, “as a former prosecutor,” she said, “I believe in the actual evidence and facts.”

“But his point about elections,” Klobuchar said, “I mean, come on now.”

Klobuchar made the general case against those who claim an indictment was unfair and noted that former President Trump faces four separate indictments in cases with constituencies that are vastly different from one another.

“We have a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, that’s been indicted in four different places, with different people, grand jurors, and I have seen this grand jury system up close. From different walks of life in states from Georgia, to New York, in places from Florida, as different as that is from D.C. that have decided to indict the former president on various charges. So that’s what I’m looking at right now,” she said. 

“In America, the law is king. The president isn’t king, no matter how much money and how much rhetoric and how much he throws at things,” Klobuchar said. “It is the law that’s king, and that’s what you see happening right now with the prosecutions of those that participated in an insurrection on the United States Capitol and what you see in the ongoing proceedings.”

Klobuchar’s comments come after reports Friday that revealed the Fulton County grand jury recommended charges against Graham, but prosecutors declined to pursue them. 

Graham had defended the highly publicized call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) at the time and claimed his actions were consistent with his role as senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also noted that he voted to certify the election ultimately for President Biden.

“What I did was consistent with my job as being United States senator, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I think this system, this country is getting off the rails. And we have to be careful not to use the legal system as a political tool,” Graham told reporters in response to the news Friday.