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      Bond for Donald Trump set at $200,000 in Georgia election subversion case

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      Donald Trump’s bond on racketeering and conspiracy charges relating to attempted election subversion in Georgia was set at $200,000.In a court document posted online on Monday, bond amounts for the 13 charges against the former president ranged from $10,000, for counts including criminal conspiracy and filing false documents, to $80,000, for a violation of the Georgia Rico Act, often used against organised crime.Terms included a prohibition of “act[ing] to intimidate any person known to … be a codefendant or witness in this case”, including in “posts on social media”.Authorities in Georgia are investigating threats made to grand jurors.The bond document also said Trump “shall not communicate in any way, directly or indirectly, about the facts of this case with any person known to him to be a codefendant in this case except through his or her counsel”.John Eastman, a law professor who advised Trump in his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, saw bond set at $100,000.Defendants also include the former New York mayor and Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. The deadline for defendants to turn themselves in is 12pm ET on Friday.The document concerning Trump’s bond was signed by Scott McAfee, a superior court judge, three Trump lawyers and Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county who last week secured indictments of Trump and 18 aides and allies.Willis has proposed that arraignments begin in the week of 5 September before a trial in March.Trump denies wrongdoing in Georgia and in three other indictments which have produced a total of 91 criminal charges.The charges cover federal and state election subversion in 2020, the retention of classified information after leaving office, and hush-money payments to a porn star during the 2016 election.Despite such unprecedented legal jeopardy – to which can be added civil investigations of Trump’s business affairs and a defamation case in which a judge said Trump was adjudicated a rapist – the former president dominates the race for the Republican presidential nomination.Ahead of the first debate on Wednesday, which Trump will not attend, he leads his nearest challenger, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, by about 40 points in national polling averages and by wide margins in key states.On social media on Monday, some observers doubted that Trump, notorious for attacking enemies on social media (which he did the same day, aiming at the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp), would abide by the terms of his bond.“Barring a real come-to-Jesus moment,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State law professor, “the only way Trump doesn’t violate his … conditions is if his lawyers confiscate his phone.”Others noted how Trump has leveraged his predicament to fund his campaign to return to the White House, widely seen as his best hope of avoiding prison.Ron Filipkowski, a Florida attorney turned viral Trump critic, said it was “time to shake down the donors”. More

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      Trump Wasn’t Invited to This Georgia Event, but His Presence Was Still Felt

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      Although the Republican front-runner was absent at a conservative conference where other candidates were in attendance, he was still top of mind.The two-day Republican gathering in Atlanta was supposed to be something of a Trump-free zone.The host, the conservative commentator Erick Erickson, did not include former President Donald J. Trump in the confab, and instead conducted 45-minute “fireside chat” interviews with six of his rivals for the Republican nomination. He told the crowd on Friday that Mr. Trump, and the criminal indictment handed down against him on Monday just 10 miles away, would not be a topic of discussion.“We’ve got six presidential candidates — two governors, two senators, two members of Congress,” said Mr. Erickson, who is based in Georgia. “I want to ask them about policy questions.”But even as the featured politicians tried to make their own cases without mentioning the former president, also the party’s current front-runner for 2024, his influence — and stranglehold over the Republican primary race — was palpable.Former Vice President Mike Pence sidestepped a question about how he would close the polling gap with Mr. Trump. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who served as United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, thinly complimented the former president even as she explained why she was running against her former boss. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s closest rival, said he hoped that the party would focus more on the future than “some of the other static that is out there.”On and offstage, participants and attendees alike said they believed that defeating President Biden would not be possible as long as the party repeated Mr. Trump’s assertions that the 2020 election was stolen.Georgia will play a pivotal role in the outcome of the general election, both because of recent election outcomes and because the state has the jurisdiction in the most recent Trump indictment. It’s why current and former state officials have been vocal about their belief that having Mr. Trump at the top of the ticket risks delivering a message that is more focused on 2020 election denialism than policy — one that could hurt their chances of winning in the key battleground state.“It should be such an easy path for us to win the White House back,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, one of the few figures who was asked about and who directly addressed Mr. Trump. “We have to be focused on the future, not something that happened three years ago.”Mr. Trump is expected to skip the first Republican debate next week and post an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that night instead. He still has a solid, double-digit lead over his rivals, according to recent state and national polls. At the weekend event, themed “Forward: Which Way,” attendees saw a chance to hear voices other than Mr. Trump’s. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is in single digits in most national polls, vowed to give governors more power in federal decisions and stayed true to his positive, faith-based message. Mr. DeSantis gave highlights from his family’s recent campaign trip to the Iowa State Fair while emphasizing the policies he has passed in Florida. Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and author who has received attention recently from voters and rivals alike, spoke of a “revolution” in changing how the federal government operates.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Mr. Trump’s most vocal critic, largely avoided mention of the former president but later railed against him to reporters outside the event, calling him “a coward” for not joining the debate on Wednesday, adding, “He’s afraid of me, and he’s afraid of defending his record.”While many in the crowd expressed frustration over Mr. Trump’s legal troubles, they also said that Monday’s indictment was little more than a politically motivated sideshow that distracted from larger policy issues.Electing a candidate who can defeat Mr. Biden in the general election remained their chief objective — one that many attendees said would be challenging if Mr. Trump’s campaign message focused more on his 2020 grievances instead of policy.“Honestly, we need a new generation,” said Lyn Murphy, a Republican activist who attended Friday’s gathering. “We’ve got a great bench.”Bill Coons, 58, who identified himself as a political independent who voted for a third-party candidate in 2016 and supported Mr. Trump in 2020, said he probably would not support Mr. Trump if he became the party’s nominee.“Why talk about the past when you’ve got a future to move towards?” he said. “The future of this nation is dire if Biden is re-elected, in my opinion.”Although Georgia has long been a Republican stronghold, voters there chose Mr. Biden in 2020, making him the first Democrat in nearly 30 years to win the state. It also sent Democrats to the U.S. Senate in two 2021 runoff races, and re-elected Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in 2022 for a full term. When asked about her role in the Trump administration, Ms. Haley called Mr. Trump “the right president at the right time.”But “at the end of the day, we have to win in November,” she said. “And it is time to put that negativity and that drama behind us.” More

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      Georgia takes on Trump and his allies | podcast

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      Until five months ago, no former US president had ever faced criminal charges. As of Monday evening, Donald Trump is facing 91 felony counts. The 97-page indictment handed down by a Fulton county grand jury in Georgia includes 41 criminal counts, 13 of them against Trump. This case may represent the biggest legal peril for Trump to date and it could see him behind bars, no matter who wins the presidential election next year.
      Joan E Greve and Sam Levine discuss every possible outcome

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Trump Supporters’ Calls for Georgia to Stymie Prosecution Fall Flat

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      Appeals by the former president’s supporters to change the state’s rules on pardons, and to investigate or even impeach the prosecutor in the case, will likely go nowhere, at least for now.The racketeering case against Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia has ignited outrage among staunch supporters of the former president, pushing some to urge the Republican-controlled state legislature to find a way to intervene.Change the state’s rules on pardons to empower the governor to absolve Mr. Trump and his associates should they be convicted — that has been one suggestion making the rounds on social media and conservative talk shows this week.And on Thursday, a state senator from rural northwest Georgia sent a letter to the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, demanding an emergency special session for “the review and response to the actions of Fani Willis,” the Fulton County district attorney who is leading the case.The odds of any of that coming to fruition anytime soon: slim to nonexistent.“It ain’t going to happen,” said Charles S. Bullock III, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, who is considered a leading scholar on politics in Georgia and the South, which he has studied for more than five decades.There are not only procedural hurdles standing in the way but the political reality in Georgia. Mr. Kemp, who would have to call a special session, has signaled he has no interest in doing so. He and Mr. Trump parted ways in 2020 after he refuted Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud in the state; this week, he once again pushed back on such claims.And while Republicans control the legislature, they do not appear to have the votes needed to achieve what Mr. Trump’s supporters are seeking. For one thing, they lack a two-thirds majority in the State Senate.State Senator Colton Moore, who wrote the letter calling for the special session, has argued that the prosecution of Mr. Trump was politically motivated, and that the Legislature should investigate Ms. Willis, an elected Democrat, and possibly impeach her.In interviews with conservative commentators on Thursday, Mr. Moore asserted that Ms. Willis was “using taxpayer money, using her government authority, to persecute her political opponent.”The Fulton County district attorney’s office declined to comment on Mr. Moore’s letter.Separately, some Trump supporters have pushed for changes in how pardons are given in the state. In Georgia, the power to pardon rests with a state board appointed by the governor, not with the governor himself. A pardon is a possibility only for an individual who has completed the sentence and “lived a law-abiding life” for five years before applying.Changing the law would require amending the state Constitution, which would require the approval of two-thirds of the Legislature.Cody Hall, a senior adviser to the governor, strongly suggested to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that Mr. Kemp was opposed to challenging the Trump prosecution. “Where have I heard special session, changing decades-old law and overturning constitutional precedent before?” Mr. Hall asked, referring to unsuccessful calls from Mr. Trump and others for a special session to overturn President Biden’s win in the state. “Oh right, prior to Republicans losing two Senate runoffs in January of 2021.”He was referring to the runoff races that Republican incumbents lost that month to Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, as Mr. Trump clung to claims of election fraud in Georgia.“What are people hoping to learn in the second kick of the election-losing mule?” Mr. Hall added.Asked on Thursday about the new call for a special session, a spokesman for Mr. Kemp referred a reporter to Mr. Hall’s comments to the Journal-Constitution.Representative Jon Burns, the Republican speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, declined through a spokesman to comment.Still, the state’s Republican leadership was not completely averse to the idea of challenging local prosecutors. Legislation signed this year by Mr. Kemp establishes a state commission that could investigate local prosecutors or remove them from office.Ms. Willis was a principal critic. More

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      Names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors posted on rightwing websites

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      Law enforcement officials in Georgia say they are investigating threats targeting members of the grand jury that indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies, after private information about jurors was published online.On Thursday, the Fulton county sheriff’s office announced that it was “aware that personal information of members of the Fulton county grand jury is being shared on various platforms”.On Monday the Fulton county grand jury returned a 41-count indictment charging Trump and others with illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.According to the Independent, several users on Trump’s rightwing social media platform Truth Social posted the names of the jurors, with one user writing, “Someone needs to look into all of these grand jurors. I can guarantee that everyone of them has a BIG FAT D by their name!”Another user wrote: “I’m looking forward to the fun some will have with the list of leaked grand jurors …,” the outlet reported.Meanwhile, CNN reported that in addition to names, photos, social media profiles and even home addresses appearing to belong to the jurors have been shared online on various platforms including pro-Trump forums and websites that have been linked to extremist attacks.In Thursday’s announcement, the sheriff’s office said that its investigators were working closely with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to track down the origins of the threats in Fulton county and other jurisdictions.“We take this matter very seriously and are coordinating with our law enforcement partners to respond quickly to any credible threat and to ensure the safety of those individuals who carried out their civic duty. If anyone becomes aware of a threat, please call 911 immediately or contact your local police department,” the sheriff’s office added.Though the grand jury proceedings were secret, the unredacted names of the grand jury members were included in the indictment. That is standard practice in Georgia, in part because it gives criminal defendants a chance to challenge the composition of the grand jury. The indictment itself is a public record.The American Bar Association condemned any threats as well as the sharing of other personal information about the grand jurors online.“The civic-minded members of the Georgia grand jury performed their duty to support our democracy,” the association’s statement said. “It is unconscionable that their lives should be upended and safety threatened for being good citizens.”Since the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, delivered the 41-count indictment, Willis, who is African American, has faced a wave of racist abuse online including from Trump, who, using a thinly veiled play on the N-word, wrote on Truth Social: “They never went after those that Rigged the Election … They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”As Trump prepares for his fourth arraignment, authorities remain concerned over the spike in political violence across the country. This week, a Texas woman was arrested and charged with threatening to kill Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against Trump in Washington DC.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe woman, identified as Abigail Jo Shry of Texas, also threatened to kill Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democratic representative, according to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press.Meanwhile, Trump himself has also made threats to authorities and his rivals amid his mounting legal woes, writing on social media: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you.” More

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      A Majority of Americans Support Trump Indictments, Polls Show

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      Recent polls conducted before the Georgia indictment showed that most believed that the prosecutions of the former president were warranted.Former President Donald J. Trump’s blistering attacks on prosecutors and the federal government over the cascade of indictments he faces do not appear to be resonating much with voters in the latest polls, yet his grip on Republicans is further tightening.A majority of Americans, in four recent polls, said Mr. Trump’s criminal cases were warranted. Most were surveyed before a grand jury in Georgia indicted him over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election, but after the federal indictment related to Jan. 6.At the same time, Mr. Trump still holds a dominant lead over the crowded field of Republicans who are challenging him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who continues to slide.The polls — conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, ABC News/Ipsos and Fox News — showed that Americans remain divided along party lines over the dozens of criminal charges facing Mr. Trump.The takeaways aligned with the findings of a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, in which 22 percent of voters who believed that Mr. Trump had committed serious federal crimes said they still planned to support him in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Mr. DeSantis.Here are key findings from the recent polling:Most say a felony conviction should be disqualifying.In the Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of registered voters said Mr. Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And seven out of 10 voters said that anyone convicted of a felony should no longer be eligible to be president.Half of Americans, but only 20 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. This poll, which surveyed American adults, was the only one of the four surveys conducted entirely after Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia.When specifically asked by ABC about the Georgia case, 63 percent said the latest criminal charges against Mr. Trump were “serious.”Republicans, by and large, haven’t wavered.The trends were mixed for Mr. Trump, who is a voracious consumer of polls and often mentions them on social media and during campaign speeches. He has continually argued that the indictments were politically motivated and intended to short-circuit his candidacy.In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump trailed President Biden by a single percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. Mr. Biden’s advantage was 5 percentage points in July.At his campaign rallies, Mr. Trump has frequently boasted how the indictments have been a boon for his polling numbers — and that rang true when Republicans were surveyed about the primary race.In those polls that tracked the G.O.P. nominating contest, Mr. Trump widened his lead over his challengers, beating them by nearly 40 points. His nearest competitor, Mr. DeSantis, had fallen below 20 percent in both the Fox and Quinnipiac polls.Mr. DeSantis, who earlier this month replaced his campaign manager as he shifts his strategy, dropped by 6 to 7 percentage points in recent months in both polls.Trump participated in criminal conduct, Americans say.About half of Americans said that Mr. Trump’s interference in the election in Georgia was illegal, according to the AP/NORC poll.A similar share of Americans felt the same way after Mr. Trump’s indictments in the classified documents and the Jan. 6 cases, but the percentage was much lower when he was charged in New York in a case related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.Fewer than one in five Republicans said that Mr. Trump had committed a crime in Georgia or that he broke any laws in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.When asked by Fox News whether Mr. Trump had engaged in illegal activity to overturn the 2020 election, 53 percent of registered voters said yes.But just 13 percent of Republicans shared that view.A plurality of those surveyed by ABC (49 percent) believed that Mr. Trump should be charged with a crime in Georgia.Support for the Justice Department’s charges.Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults said that they approved of the Justice Department’s decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump for his attempts to reverse his electoral defeat in 2020, The A.P. found.At the same time, the public’s confidence in the Justice Department registered at 17 percent in the same poll. More

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      Georgia Republican lawmaker moves to impeach Trump prosecutor Fani Willis

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      A Republican state senator in Georgia has moved to impeach the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.The move comes in the wake of Willis’s delivery of a 41-count indictment against the former president Donald Trump and his operatives on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to reverse Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss in the state.On Thursday, Colton Moore wrote a letter to Governor Brian Kemp in which he called for an emergency review of Willis’s actions.“We, the undersigned … hereby certify to you … that in our opinion an emergency exists in the affairs of the state, requiring a special session to be convened … for all purposes, to include, without limitation, the review and response to the actions of Fani Willis,” Moore wrote.Moore, who represents senate district 53, posted his letter on Twitter alongside the caption: “As a Georgia state senator, I am officially calling for an emergency session to review the actions of Fani Willis.“America is under attack. I’m not going to sit back and watch as radical left prosecutors politically TARGET political opponents,” he added.In a statement reported by the rightwing media outlet Breitbart, Moore said: “We must strip all funding and, if appropriate, impeach Fani Willis.”Moore appears to have also launched a website for the official petition of Willis.“Corrupt district attorney Fani Willis is potentially abusing her position of power by pursuing former president Donald J Trump, and I am calling on my colleagues in the Georgia legislature to join me in calling for an emergency session to investigate and review her actions and determine if they warrant impeachment.“The politically motivated weaponization of our justice system at the expense of taxpayers will not be tolerated. I am demanding that we defund her office until we find out what the hell is going on. We cannot stand idly by as corrupt prosecutors choose to target their political opposition,” the website read underneath a headline of “God. Guns. Liberty. Leadership.”Moore’s announcement triggered praise from several conservatives online, with one person writing: “Finally a Republican with courage. So refreshing to see someone FIGHT instead of sit back and say ‘there’s nothing we can do.’”Another user wrote: “Finally, a Republican with a backbone.”“Republicans who walk the walk are my kind of Republicans,” someone else wrote.Following Willis’s delivery of the 41-count indictment, the Fulton county district attorney, who is African American, has faced a wave of racist abuse online including from Trump, who, using a thinly veiled play on the N-word, wrote on Truth Social: “They never went after those that Rigged the Election … They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!” More

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      Trump’s indictment can’t solve the real threat: our undemocratic electoral system | Lawrence Douglas

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      Read the indictment handed down by a Fulton county, Georgia, grand jury: weighing in at 98 pages, it is a breathtaking document, granular in its description of a coordinated criminal enterprise that brazenly broke numerous Georgia state laws.The 19 persons named in the racketeering charges are not, however, members of some sleazy organized crime syndicate; rather, they include the former president of the United States, his chief of staff, a former mayor of New York, a former law school dean and a former official in the US Department of Justice. Together they stand accused of knowingly and willfully joining a conspiracy to subvert the outcome of a fair, democratic election.Placed alongside Trump’s other three indictments, the Georgia case bears the greatest similarity to the federal charges, filed earlier this month, accusing Trump of criminal acts that culminated in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Still, the Georgia matter carries different risks and rewards.Georgia’s racketeering statute is a more flexible instrument than its federal counterpart, and so empowers the prosecution to craft a broad narrative linking Trump’s lying to the state’s officials, his intimidating and defaming its election officers, and his sanctioning a slate of false Georgian electors for his nationwide efforts to overturn Biden’s victory. And as the constitution’s pardon power only extends to federal matters, a state conviction would deny Trump the opportunity to pardon himself (itself an act of dubious constitutionality).In declaring that she intends to try all 19 co-conspirators in a single trial, however, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis risks turning the proceeding into a long and unfocused affair, marred by the grandstanding of multiple lawyers for the defense. Add to this the fact that while federal trials cannot be televised, this case arguably could be, raising the concern that a solemn proceeding could turn into a media circus.There is, of course, another deeper source of alarm. Much as we might hope that the criminal justice system will put an end to the clear and present danger that Trump poses to our constitutional democracy, the prospect remains that the ultimate judgment on Trump will be passed by the voters in November 2024. And this reminds us why Trump trained his lies on the result in Georgia in 2020.Biden defeated Trump by nearly 8m votes in 2020, a substantial if not overwhelming margin of victory. Matters were very different in the electoral college. A combined total of 44,000 votes handed Biden victory in the swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia.Had Trump succeeded in “finding” 45,000 more votes in these three states, the 2020 election would have resulted in an electoral college tie, an unseemly result that, by the terms of the constitution, hands the task of electing the president to the House of Representatives. In a travesty of democratic rule, when the House elects the president, each state delegation, and not each representative, gets a single vote, and while Democrats still controlled the House after the 2020 election, Republicans actually enjoyed a majority of state delegations. Trump would have won.While it is hard to imagine Trump defeating Biden in the popular vote in 2024, the electoral college remains another matter. Polls already predict another tight electoral race. Maga zealots and election deniers continue to target and attack independent election officials in the key swing states. Add to the mix the possibility of a third-party candidate, who, like Ralph Nader in 2000, would have no prospect of winning but could peel away votes in these crucial states, and the perils magnify.Generations of Americans have recognized the defects in the way we elect our president. The first serious effort to eliminate the system came in 1816 and hundreds have followed, all failing given the extreme difficulty of amending our constitution. It is a grotesque fact that a candidate who has made clear his hostility to democratic governance could only be returned to office through an antiquated, dysfunctional and anti-democratic electoral system.
      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College More