Giuliani targeted in Trump probe in Georgia, lawyer says

ATLANTA — The legal pressure on Donald J. Trump and his closest allies were further strengthened on Monday after prosecutors informed his former personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that Mr. Giuliani had been targeted in a wide-ranging criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia.

The notice came the same day a federal judge rejected efforts by another key Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to avoid testifying before a special grand jury hearing evidence in the Atlanta case.

One of Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers, Robert Costello, said in an interview that he had been notified on Monday that his client was being targeted. Identification in this way does not guarantee that a person will be charged; rather, it usually means that prosecutors believe an indictment is possible based on the evidence they’ve seen up to that point.

Mr. Giuliani, who as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer has spearheaded efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, has emerged in recent weeks as a central figure in the investigation by Fannie T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Georgia, which covers most of Atlanta.

Earlier this summer, prosecutors questioned witnesses before a special grand jury about Mr. Giuliani’s appearances before state legislative committees in December 2020, when he spent hours spreading false conspiracy theories about secret Democratic ballot suitcases and damaged machines for voting.

For Mr. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, the events are the latest in a widening string of problems, although he recently received good news when it became clear he was unlikely to face charges in a federal criminal investigation for his ties to Ukraine during the 2020 presidential campaign.

Mr. Giuliani is scheduled to appear before a special grand jury on Wednesday in a court in downtown Atlanta. His lawyer, Mr. Costello, said in the interview that Mr. Giuliani would likely invoke attorney-client privilege if asked questions about his relationship with Mr. Trump. “If these people think he’s going to talk about conversations between him and President Trump, they’re mistaken,” Mr. Costello said.

The rejection of Senator Graham’s efforts to avoid testifying came in a written order from Atlanta Federal District Court Judge Lee Martin May. Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, is now scheduled to testify on August 23.

The judge found that prosecutors had shown there was “a particular need for Mr. Graham’s testimony on matters related to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of the 2022 Georgia election.”

Mr. Graham’s lawyers said he had been informed by prosecutors that he was a witness, not a target.

Prosecutors want his testimony for a number of reasons. Among them are two phone calls Mr. Graham made just after the 2020 election to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which Mr. Graham asked about ways to help Mr. Trump by canceling certain votes by mail.

In another development Monday, recently released court records provided new details about what Mr. Trump’s allies have been up to as they tried to overturn the results in Georgia and other states. One set of documents showed that a forensics team working with lawyers associated with Mr. Trump successfully accessed critical election infrastructure in Coffey County, Georgia, obtaining information about voting machines and software.

The revelation, detailed through emails and texts obtained by The New York Times, is the first confirmation that the provincial district’s election system was breached by an unauthorized outside group. News of the breakthrough was previously reported by The The Washington Post.

The hack into Coffee County’s election system is one of several examples in states across the country, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Colorado, where a loosely connected network of technical experts and lawyers tried to obtain sensitive information about voting equipment in an expanded attempt to to show that the 2020 election is marred by fraud.

Mr. Giuliani’s post-election activities on Mr. Trump’s behalf have gotten him into trouble on a number of fronts. A House committee in Washington investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has released video tapes of Mr. Giuliani’s activities in Georgia, and the scheme to set up rival candidates for presidential electors is also under heightened investigation by the Justice Department. Mr. Giuliani is among the targets of civil suits by two voting machine manufacturers, Dominion and Smartmatic, seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Much of Mr. Giuliani’s conduct in Georgia was exposed last year by the New York State Court of Appeals, which suspended his license to practice law. The court issued a 33-page report that mentioned Georgia 35 times and described “numerous false and misleading statements about the results of the presidential election in Georgia” made by Mr. Giuliani. The court noted, for example, that Mr. Giuliani falsely claimed that tens of thousands of underage teenagers voted illegally in Georgia, even though an audit by the Georgia Secretary of State found that no one under the age of 18 voted in the 2020 election.

Mr. Giuliani was also a central figure in the Trump campaign’s plan to insist that state legislators appoint different electors than those elected by voters, which is part of the Georgia investigation as well as the Justice Department investigation.

A spokesman for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment Monday. It is not clear what charges Mr. Giuliani could face, if he is indicted. But Ms. Willis has said in the past that her investigation could lead to racketeering or conspiracy charges involving multiple defendants.

Norman Eisen, a lawyer who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and trial, said he believed the identification of Mr. Giuliani as a target could mean that Mr. Trump will eventually be a target as well.

“There is no way that Giuliani is a target of the prosecutor’s investigation and that Trump is not,” Mr. Eisen said in an interview on Monday. “They are simply too entangled factually and legally in trying to use voter fraud and other means to overturn the results of Georgia’s election.”

Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers said he had done nothing wrong in Georgia and that he was willing to cooperate. But they argued with Ms. Willis’ office over her efforts to get him to testify before a grand jury. Lawyers for Mr. Giuliani said a doctor had advised Mr. Giuliani not to travel by plane because of a procedure he underwent in early July to insert heart stents, and they tried to delay his testimony or make it via video conference, an idea that the district attorney’s office resisted.

Justice Robert SI McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court said last week that Mr. Giuliani could travel to Atlanta “by train, bus or Uber” and set a date for Wednesday after agreeing to delay his appearance with more than a week. Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers indicated that in any case their client would have nothing to say if he were named as a subject of the investigation.

“I think it would be a nefarious thing for us to do — as a target, to have him travel here, especially through these alternative means, when there probably won’t be much testimony before the grand jury,” another attorney for Giuliani, William H. Thomas Jr. , said after a court hearing.

At least 17 other people have already been identified as targets for possible charges in the probe, including two state senators and the head of the state’s Republican Party.

Mr. Graham’s lawyers had based their argument that he should not be compelled to testify on the constitution’s speech and debate clause, which protects lawmakers from being questioned about things they say that are related to their official duties. Incidentally, the lawyers argued that Mr Graham, as a high-ranking official, could only be summoned in “extraordinary circumstances”.

Judge May ruled that prosecutors had proved the existence of such extraordinary circumstances.

Mr. Graham argued that his phone calls to Mr. Raffensperger were protected by the Speech and Debate Clause because they were investigative in nature and related to his position at the time as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. But the judge, in his order, noted that “the individuals in the calls publicly suggested that Senator Graham was not simply engaging in legislative fact-finding” and “attempted to influence Secretary Raffensperger’s actions” to benefit Mr. n Trump. (Mr. Raffensperger said that Mr. Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to reject legally cast ballots.)

Judge May’s ruling essentially left it to the state court to determine which elements of Mr. Graham’s calls should be protected under the Speech and Debate Clause.

But she also noted that beyond the phone calls, there are many other matters of interest to the special grand jury that are undeniably fair game, including Mr. Graham’s “potential communications and coordination with the Trump campaign and his post-election efforts in Georgia”.

Prosecutors are demanding that two other Trump lawyers, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, also appear before the special grand jury. The involvement of Ms. Ellis, a Colorado resident, will be considered at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday in Fort Collins, Colorado. A similar hearing will be held for Mr. Eastman, a New Mexico resident, in a court in Santa Fe, NM on Wednesday.

Mr. Costello, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, was asked by a reporter Monday what form of transportation his client would use as he traveled to Atlanta from New York.

“No comment,” Mr. Costello said.

Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.