Donald Trump was expected to surrender at the Fulton county jail on Thursday evening on racketeering and conspiracy charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, yielding to the criminal justice process in Georgia that will involve him being processed like any other defendant.
The former president’s arrival in Georgia follows a presidential debate featuring his main rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination, a race in which Trump remains the overwhelmingly dominant frontrunner despite his many legal troubles.
Trump had his legal team negotiate his booking to take place during the primetime viewing hours for the cable news networks, as he sought to discredit the charges and distract from the indignity of the surrender by turning it into a spectacle.
But Trump was expected to be booked by authorities without the special privileges afforded to him in his other criminal cases, being subject to a mugshot that he had desperately sought to avoid, having his fingerprints taken, as well as having his height and weight recorded.
Trump faced his fourth indictment since leaving office when he was charged in a 41-count indictment by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, last week, that described Trump and 18 allies as having engaged in a criminal enterprise to reverse his 2020 election defeat.
In a clear sign of Willis’s desire for a swift legal process, she on Thursday asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to begin on 23 October – a date that defense lawyers are certain to seek to aggressively push back. Within hours, Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing the date.
The bond for Trump was agreed at $200,000, the highest amount of any of his co-defendants, including his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani who turned himself in for booking a day earlier after his bond was set at $150,000 after being charged with principally the same counts.
Trump was expected to leave in the afternoon from his Bedminster club in New Jersey, where he spends his summers, and fly by private plane to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport. He was then expected to travel into Atlanta by US Secret Service motorcade, a person familiar with the matter said.
The schedule will involve Trump arriving at the Rice Street jail, located north-west of downtown Atlanta, in the early evening and the motorcade is expected to snake around into the jail premises down a road lined with dozens of TV cameras.
The strategy to turn the surrender into a made-for-television circus has been an effort to discredit the indictments, the person said, as well as to capitalize on the information void left by prosecutors after the events to foist his own spin on the charges.
To that end, once Trump is done with the booking process and returns directly to the airport, Trump is weighing delivering impromptu remarks to reporters there before boarding his plane as he liked to do when he was president talking to a pool of reporters, the person said.
Ahead of the surrender, Trump shook up his legal team and retained the top Georgia attorney Steven Sadow, who filed a notice of appearance with the Fulton county superior court as lead counsel, replacing Drew Findling. Trump’s other lawyer in the case, Jennifer Little, is staying on.
The reason for the abrupt recalibration was unclear, and Trump’s aides suggested it was unrelated to performance. Still, Trump has a record of firing lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations but were unable to stave off charges.
Findling was also unable to exempt Trump from having his mugshot taken, according to people familiar with the matter – something that personally irritated Trump, even though the Fulton county sheriff’s office had always indicated they were uninterested in making such an accommodation.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The other 18 co-defendants in the 2020 election subversion case appear to be receiving regular treatment based on online jail records for the former Trump election lawyer John Eastman and others, who had their height, weight and personal appearance made public.
Once the booking is complete, Trump was expected to be released immediately on conditions that include stringent witness intimidation restrictions that have not been put in place for his co-defendants, court filings show, until he is due back in state court for arraignment.
The Trump legal team could file a motion to remove the case to federal court before then, under a federal statute that allows for such venue changes if the case involves federal officials’ actions taken “under color” of their office – as in, if it was part of official duties.
Trump could face major difficulties with that argument, however, since he would have to show that taking steps to change the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia amounted to him acting in his official capacity as president, legal experts have said.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
