Graham, a Republican legislator representing South Carolina, reportedly implored former US Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael C. Stenger to take action against the demonstrators in order to regain control during and after the attack on Capitol Hill.
“What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them,” Graham told Capitol police, according to an extensive report from The Washington Post published on Sunday.
Graham was allegedly "irate" that senators were forced to leave their chambers during the storming of the Capitol.
"We give you guns for a reason," the lawmaker exclaimed. "Use them."
The Republican legislator is said to have also called Ivanka Trump, daughter of former US President Donald Trump, multiple times in an effort to make suggestions and stop the riot.
“You need to get these people out of here. This thing is going south,” Graham urged on the phone.
“This is not good. You’re going to have to tell these people to stand down. Stand down.”
In previous critiques to the Capitol police, Graham raged on January 7 that anyone in charge of defending the Capitol failed in their duties. If they had been in the military, he said, “they’d been relieved of command, and most likely court-martialed.”
"Yesterday, they could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all," he said at the time.
"People coming through the windows had backpacks, as big as my desk on the Senate. They should have been challenged, warning shots should have been fired and lethal force should have been used once they’d penetrated the seat of government. Those backpacks could have had bombs, chemical agents, weapons. We dodged a major bullet yesterday."
Trump lashed out against on-and-off ally Graham in September as "unwilling to fight for the presidency of the United States," after reports that Graham was "unpersuaded" by Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
Graham, however, said he hoped for a potential 2024 presidential run by Trump.
"I don't think Trump is listening," Graham said at the Michigan Republican Party's leadership conference at the end of September. "He might be. I hope President Trump runs again.”
Trump’s role in the incident is under investigation by a congressional probe, as the former president intends to assert executive privilege into the January 6 insurrection.