Graham calls Trump fraud case ‘friggin’ joke’
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) slammed the New York fraud case against former President Trump on Monday, calling it a “friggin’ joke.”
Graham echoed Trump’s attacks on New York Attorney General Letitia James in an appearance on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Monday night, claiming that she brought the case against the former president for political reasons.
“Let’s look at the AG. She started attacking President Trump in 2018, and she promised if she got to be the attorney general of New York, she would make this guy’s life miserable, that she would go after him, look under every rock,” Graham said.
“So, she has used Donald Trump to elevate herself politically. She is trying to get ahead at Donald Trump’s expense,” he continued. “The judge has ruled that President Trump committed fraud and nobody got defrauded. The judge believes that Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 billion. What a friggin’ joke!”
Trump has been accused of inflating his wealth by $3.6 billion at times and deflating it at other times to deceive banks and insurers into providing financial assistance. The judge, Arthur Engoron, ruled last week that Trump was liable for fraud and stripped some of the former president’s business licenses.
James is seeking $250 million in penalties and an effective ban on the former president and his organizations ever doing business in New York again.
Trump has repeatedly attacked both the judge and the attorney general — attacks that Graham reiterated Monday night.
“It’s a systematic effort to destroy Donald Trump as a political person,” Graham said. “His crime was he was a good conservative president.”
“I’ve never seen hatred toward a political figure like I see against President Trump,” the South Carolina senator added. “The left will do anything to ruin his life that keep him from being president again.”
Trump said he would return to court Tuesday for the second day of the fraud trial. While he did not speak during the trial Monday, he spoke to reporters numerous times outside the courtroom to repeat his claims that the case was politically motivated.
Trump is also facing four federal criminal trials, involving 91 separate charges.