Hold the
Tape.

Elected to the U.S. House in 1994. The first Republican from South Carolina's 3rd district since Reconstruction.

As a House manager at Clinton's impeachment trial: “Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.” On what qualifies as a high crime: “Doesn't even have to be a crime.”

He argued that the day Nixon failed to answer a subpoena was the day he became impeachable, because he had seized Congress's power for himself.

He never disowned any of it. He told McClatchy the standard stood and his words were there to be used. He voted to acquit Donald Trump twice.

He won Strom Thurmond's seat in 2002 with 54.4 percent. He built a reputation as a dealmaker and John McCain's wingman. Rush Limbaugh called him “Lindsey Grahamnesty.” The South Carolina GOP censured him repeatedly for reaching across the aisle.

He co-sponsored McCain's anti-torture Detainee Treatment Act. This is the credential everyone cites.

He also authored the amendment stripping habeas corpus from Guantánamo detainees. It passed 49 to 42. The Graham-Levin amendment then allowed the Defense Department to consider evidence obtained through torture and widened the habeas bar. Amnesty International and others said it hollowed out the ban he had just co-sponsored. Same man. Same year.

With Jon Kyl he filed an amicus brief in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld claiming Congress had been aware the Act stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over pending cases. The record did not support the claim. Emily Bazelon, in Slate: “Did Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl mislead the Supreme Court?” The majority noted the maneuver.

On the Senate floor, on Americans accused of terrorism: “When they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.’”

The Gang of Eight. The high-water mark of his reputation, and the bill he would spend 2019 dismantling. Set out in the ledger above.

Trump reads Graham's personal cell number aloud at a rally. Graham replies with a video destroying flip phones: meat cleaver, golf club, blender, toaster oven, lighter fluid, one thrown off a roof.

Also on the record from this period: the Republican Party had gone “bat shit crazy” and “has been conned.” Trump was a “jackass” and a “nutjob.” He compared Trump's nomination to “being shot in the head.” In May 2016 he tweeted: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.”

He drops out of the presidential race. He endorses Jeb Bush, then Ted Cruz.

Everything he later became, he described first, out loud, correctly.

A lunch at the White House. Graham's readout: Trump is “strongly committed to rebuilding our military which is music to my ears.” He gives Trump his new phone number.

On The View, asked about his 2015 words: “I said he was a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot. I ran out of things to say. He won.”

McCain dies. Graham delivers an emotional floor eulogy: “If you want to help the country, be more like John McCain.” He had spent his friend's final illness golfing with the man who mocked McCain's captivity.

The Kavanaugh hearing. “This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics.” “Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it.” To Kavanaugh: “You're looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time.” A CNN commentator called it an audition. Two months later he was named chairman of the Judiciary Committee. His supporters count this as his finest hour, and still do.

March 2016: use my words against me. October 2018: hold the tape. September 2020: I fully understand where the president is coming from. October 2020: Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed eight days before the election, a 6 to 3 majority locked in for a generation.

Graham telephones Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State. Raffensperger's account, given repeatedly and under oath to the January 6 committee, is that Graham asked whether ballots could be matched back to voters, and that he understood it as a suggestion he look at counties with high signature-error rates and throw those ballots out. Raffensperger testified he was “uncomfortable” and did not know where it was going to lead. Graham called that characterization “ridiculous” and said he was asking about signature-verification process.

From the Senate floor, hours after the Capitol was cleared, voting to certify: “Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it.” And: “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.” He took the fraud claims one at a time and dismantled them from the floor.

Four months after enough is enough: “Can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no. I've determined we can't grow without him.”

The Eleventh Circuit rules that coordination with the Trump campaign, public statements about the election, and efforts to cajole or exhort Georgia officials were not legislative acts and were not shielded. He testifies before the Fulton County special grand jury on November 22, 2022.

The special grand jury's report is unsealed. It recommended charges against Graham. District Attorney Fani Willis declined to bring them. He was never indicted. His account: “I never asked him to set aside ballots or anything else. After the conversation, I decided it was best for me to vote to certify.” The same day: “I am standing with President Trump.”

After the Oval Office blow-up with Volodymyr Zelensky, Graham tells reporters outside the West Wing that Zelensky should resign. He then returns to being Ukraine's loudest advocate in the Senate.

As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee he is central to passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: the 2017 tax cuts made permanent, $150 billion in military spending, border funding, a debt-ceiling raise, and work requirements for Medicaid. His own release describes the Medicaid provisions as eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.

He pushes 500 percent secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian energy. The economist Jeffrey Sachs calls him “the worst senator in the US Senate” and argues the tariffs unified BRICS: “Donald Trump was the great unifier of the BRICS.”

He wins the Republican primary with 56.8 percent, narrowly avoiding a runoff. He had spent close to $20 million against a political newcomer, with Trump's endorsement in hand.

He announces a bipartisan Russia sanctions deal with the White House. He has just returned from his tenth trip to Kyiv since 2022.