WASHINGTON — FBI agents returned to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s home in DC on Monday after the South Carolina Republican suddenly died due to a ruptured aorta two days prior.
Photos show at least five agents moving in and out of the Capitol Hill residence around 2:30 p.m. ET, with one carrying a clipboard and another wearing latex gloves.
Jerrett Wilson from Fort Lauderdale, who has been staying at a nearby Airbnb on vacation, told The Post: “Saturday night we were coming back from dinner about 9:30, and the street was shut down. Paramedics, law enforcement, and as we were walking up, they stopped us.”
“We told them where we were staying at. They let us go, and as we were walking up there, we saw the gurney being rolled out with somebody on,” he said.
“There’s just been heavy law enforcement presence today with the FBI. I want to say the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] was out here as well, going in … the house and interviewing some neighbors,” he added.
Preliminary findings from the DC medical examiner’s office that the ruptured aorta was caused by chronic heart disease.
Emergency Medical Services audio reviewed by The Post revealed that a phone call was made around 8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night, in which a dispatcher called for medics to respond to someone suffering chest pains at Graham’s longtime Capitol Hill residence.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Washington Examiner that the aortal tear “obviously 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.”
In 1977, the senator’s father, Florence James Graham, died in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 69.
Graham, 71, had just returned from a visit to Ukraine where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
It was his 10th trip to Kyiv since the start of the war and the senator’s bipartisan sanctions bill had recently been given the greenlight by the Trump White House to proceed through Congress.
FBI Director Kash Patel said Sunday the FBI “is assisting local authorities and has made every necessary resource available” in Graham’s death investigation. Federal agents were dispatched to his home that day.
A law enforcement source told The Post there is no evidence of foul play linked to the Republican’s sudden death. Still, the suddenness of his death immediately after a foreign trip has led to online speculation.
Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), a strong “anti-communist voice in Congress,” was killed in office when a Soviet Su-15 interceptor jet shot down a commercial plane that he and more than 260 passengers and crew were flying in from Alaska to South Korea in 1983.
Soviet officials later admitted to firing on the plane, with their representative to the UN accusing Americans of trying to conduct espionage.
