Growing Consensus Lindsey Graham was Assassinated

Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service Designated Graham as a Terrorist.

On the passing, or murder, of Lindsey Graham, I am reminded of the Gospel of Matthew. “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52), or colloquially: Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Graham, to my knowledge, never brandished a sword, or any other weapon, although at one point he was a Judge Advocate General, a JAG officer in the US Air Force. During Papa Bush’s 1990–1991 Gulf War, Graham tutored pilots on the “laws of war.” He later lied about his service, insisting he was “an Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran” when he was staff judge advocate at McEntire Air National Guard Base in South Carolina.

Lindsey’s sword was his mouth. “Some people say I’m too blunt and I’m too direct, too straightforward,” he once said. In 2022, he said that “somebody in Russia” should remove Putin, which drew a Russian backlash. The following year, while visiting Kyiv, he remarked that the US assistance to Zelenskyy and the Azov Nazis was “the best money we’ve ever spent,” and further stated that “the Russians are dying.”

In March, 2022, he called for Putin to be assassinated. “Yeah, I hope he’ll be taken out. One way or the other. I don’t care how they take him out... If John McCain were here he’d be saying the same thing... the world is better off without Putin.”

This prompted Russia to initiate a case against Graham and include him on a wanted list. Graham challenged the warrant, declaring he would wear it as a “badge of honor.” In February 2024 Rosfinmonitoring, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation, added him to its registry of “terrorists and extremists.”

Graham sponsored S.1241, the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025. The bill proposed imposing “property-blocking sanctions on specified persons such as the Russian president, certain Russian military commanders, and any foreign person that knowingly provides defense items to the Russian armed forces,” and also increased duties on Russian goods at 500%.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, described the sanctions pressure as an “act of war” against Russia. “The United States is our adversary,” he added. “The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia. And now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe.” Trump then slapped Russia’s two largest oil companies with sanctions and canceled a Budapest summit with Putin. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington would take further action.

After the official explanation, that Graham died at home from an “aortic dissection” related to the hardening of his arteries, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson argued the senator’s trip to Ukraine and a return arrival time was impossible.

“Lindsey Graham couldn’t have died at home on Saturday night,” Johnson said. “The trip to Ukraine plus the return journey make arriving at 8:30 p.m. impossible. Pentagon insiders know the truth. He died in Kiev. The cover story is already exposed by simple schedules. America deserves facts.”

Russia is little different than the US or Israel when dealing with enemies. Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, and Alexander Litvinenko were allegedly assassinated by Russian security services. As with murders attributed to Israel, the accusations are often inferential.

It is likely we will never know for sure who is responsible for the death of Lindsey Graham. If it was indeed Russia, and there is evidence of its involvement, this will probably never be admitted, as it casts a negative light on the ability of the United States to protect its political class from retribution.