Graham asked a staffer to call 911 after reporting chest pains, GOP senator says

(CNN) — GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville said one of his staffers was with Sen. Lindsey Graham’s scheduler Saturday evening when the late senator called the scheduler to complain of chest pains and asked her to call for emergency services.

“Lindsey called, called basically, said, ‘Listen, I’m having chest pains. You know, I need to do something,’” Tuberville said to reporters on Monday, relaying the account of those involved.

Tuberville said Graham’s scheduler asked if he had called 911 and Graham responded, “no, that’s the reason I called you.”

“By the time she got there, 911 had knocked the door down, and they were working on him,” he said.

The senator’s account adds new details to what happened before Graham died, appearing to confirm some aspects of what is known about an emergency phone call about the incident.

CNN previously reported that emergency responders were dispatched to a DC address for Graham around 8:30 pm ET for a report of someone suffering chest pains, according to audio of the dispatch on Broadcastify. The audio indicates someone called in from Baltimore and was heading to the home.

Graham had just returned home from a trip to Ukraine, and President Donald Trump told CNN they spoke shortly before Graham’s death. The president said they discussed his voter ID legislation — the “SAVE America Act” — and Graham’s recent travels.

“He said, ‘I’m tired because it’s a long trip,’ but other than that, he was – he was fine,” Trump recalled.

Taylor Reidy, a communications director for Graham, said previously that the DC medical examiner’s office preliminarily found the senator died from complications stemming from an aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease – essentially a tear in the inner layer of aorta, the main artery running through the body. Aortic dissection is not a heart attack, but the symptoms, including chest or stomach pain, shortness of breath and loss of consciousness, often resemble those of more common conditions.

A final autopsy is still pending. And GOP Sen. John Cornyn told reporters he would like to see Graham’s toxicology report released “to rule out any foul play” and put to rest any false theories spreading online.

“We, you know, 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.

Tuberville said that the Graham scheduler who called 911 on Saturday used to work in his office and was at a restaurant watching the World Cup with one of his staffers when Graham called.

“Lindsey basically worked himself to death,” Tuberville said. “Most of us have families. He didn’t have any family, and if we had a couple of days off, he went to that airport. He went somewhere to try to work out something for our country.”

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CNN’s Morgan Rimmer and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.