October 23 2026 - 12:30pm
The late Lindsey Graham’s sex life might be fair game, but new revelations make for a weak “October surprise” — the kind of late-breaking story that can sway a midterm election. Graham’s alleged dalliances are the subject of a new documentary, Closetocracy, that was released on Thursday and features several male prostitutes who say the senator hired them for sex.
One alleged former sex partner, Kelvin, claims Graham taped an encounter between them when he was 17 and working as an escort. He says he told a nervous Graham that he was 18.
The encounter supposedly took place in 2000, the year before Graham moved from the House of Representatives to the Senate. And if true, the allegation is explosive: a sitting congressman allegedly recorded himself having sex with an underage male escort.
Graham, who was unmarried, long denied being gay and routinely voted against the LGBT movement’s priorities in Congress, where he represented South Carolina, a conservative state. It seems plausible that foreign adversaries could have used his private sexual experiences to blackmail him, particularly if they were recorded and involved underage men.
As classless as some of Graham’s detractors are, the topic is newsworthy. Just this week, Graham’s legacy was invoked to shame Donald Trump for waiving Russia sanctions named after the senator. His political clout shaped this current administration, and continues to shape American foreign policy. His sister, who now holds his Senate seat, could be vulnerable to blackmail if anyone sought to exploit her desire to prevent even more damaging revelations.
This is supported by the nature of the allegations against Graham. Closetocracy was accompanied by supporting documentation on a website, including photographs and train tickets that, when matched against news reports, appear to corroborate the three men’s accounts of where Graham and the men were, and when. Without outside verification, like forwarded emails to named journalists and metadata checks, it’s hard to know whether the screenshots were altered. The company that produced the documentary, SwampWatch, compiles valuable information on both parties but doesn’t credit any particular journalists with bylines.
The allegation that Graham recorded an encounter with an underage escort is genuinely new, but other men have made similar claims about him before. In this sense, it recalls the “Access Hollywood” tape, believed at the time to be the mother of all October surprises. The Republican presidential nominee had been caught on tape saying you could “grab ‘em by the pussy” — a revelation many expected to end his political career. Trump went on to tie Hillary Clinton among independent voters, and it barely budged the electorate at all.
But this is where the Lindsey Graham allegations could prove important. Darline Graham is in a surprisingly close election to hold her brother’s seat right now. But as with Trump’s crude jokes about women, the Graham documentary seems to prove what the public already knew. That means the political consequences are already baked into the cake. Anyone who opposes Darline because they regard Lindsey as a hypocrite or a national security liability has probably already made up their mind: the basic narrative is relatively well known.
Despite Graham’s sudden passing, some of Closetocracy is newsworthy. Whether it’ll move the needle is less likely.
