Republican Senator John Cornyn has added to the growing MAGA conspiracy theories around the sudden death of Lindsey Graham.
The South Carolina Republican died on Saturday, at 71, from an aortic dissection linked to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. A final autopsy is still pending.
Emergency personnel responded to a report of cardiac arrest at his Washington, D.C., home Saturday evening, just hours after Graham returned from a trip to Ukraine and experienced chest pains.
Cornyn told reporters on Monday he wants to see Graham’s toxicology report released “to rule out any foul play” and silence online theories that have surfaced since his death.
“I saw the initial diagnosis of a dissected aorta — which is terrible, I mean, obviously, that could cause his death — but given where he was and the sorts of things he was advocating for, I think we just ought to resolve all those questions by seeing what the toxicology reports show,” Cornyn said, per CNN.
When asked if he was concerned Graham was poisoned, Cornyn said “I’m just saying he needs a toxicology test to rule out any foul play.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Graham’s office for comment.
Cornyn’s comments come as FBI agents were sighted outside Graham’s Washington, D.C., home on Monday, for a second consecutive day.
Serial MAGA conspiracy theorist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer was one of the first to question Graham’s death.
“Was he poisoned by a foreign adversary either abroad or upon returning to the US?” Loomer wrote on X, in a post viewed 1.8 million times, without providing evidence. “There should be an investigation into his death. Especially after Iran called for his death less than one week ago.”
She added, “What do his staff mean by a `brief and sudden illness’? Poison?”
Loomer also wrote on X: “Did Russia just murder a US Senator?”
Speaking on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Monday, former Democratic Congressman Max Rose weighed in on the MAGA reaction to Graham’s shock death.
“Look, going viral is really one hell of a drug. And these folks can‘t resist it,” Rose said. “Heck, even when they‘re not up for re-election, when they‘re staring down the barrel of the end of their political career, and they have no need to continue to burnish some type of image, they still say such ridiculous things.”
He said Cornyn’s statement was “incredibly dangerous.”
“We‘re talking about extraordinary geopolitical implications here, should what he is even alluding to be true, that Russia is murdering a sitting United States senator, which makes this one of the more irresponsible things that a national politician has said.”
Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson stuck up for Cornyn on CNN.
“He‘s not the kind of guy to want to be viral,” Carlson said. “He is not the kind of guy to not think through, as a former lawyer and I believe judge, what he is saying before he says it.”
She added, “I would pay very close attention to what John Cornyn is saying.”
Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville revealed on Monday that one of his staffers was with Graham’s scheduler on Saturday evening when the late senator called the scheduler after experiencing chest pains, and asked her to call emergency services.
“Lindsey called, called basically, said, ‘Listen, I’m having chest pains. You know, I need to do something,’” Tuberville said. When the scheduler asked Graham if he had called 911, the senator said “No, that’s the reason I called you.”
The staffer was at a restaurant and left to attend to Graham.
“By the time she got there, 911 had knocked the door down, and they were working on him,” Tuberville said.
He continued, “Lindsey basically worked himself to death. Most of us have family, he didn’t have any family. If we had a couple of days off, he went to that airport and he went somewhere to try and work something out for our country.’
“He was very well know, he was very smart, he knew foreign relations, there’s no conspiracy theory here.”
