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      In Trump Case, Thorny Conflict of Interest Question Looms

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      At the heart of the effort to disqualify the prosecutors in Donald J. Trump’s election interference case is the argument that the romantic relationship between Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, and Nathan J. Wade, the special prosecutor she hired, created a conflict of interest.That argument has been put forth primarily by Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer for Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official and a co-defendant in the case. Ms. Merchant accuses the district attorney of hiring Mr. Wade after they became romantically involved, and notes that the pair took several vacations together that were paid for by Mr. Wade.But Mr. Wade says the romantic relationship began after he was hired. And according to Ms. Willis, they “roughly divided” the costs of the trips.Ms. Merchant said in a recent court filing that the pair had “personally enriched themselves off the case.” That enrichment, she wrote, “is a form of self-dealing, which creates a personal interest in the case. In other words, the more work that is done on the case (regardless of what justice calls for) the more they get paid.”That personal interest, she added, is “at odds with the district attorney’s obligation to seek justice.” Ms. Merchant and other defense lawyers have also argued that the situation violates various laws and the State Bar of Georgia’s rules of professional conduct.Some legal observers have rejected out of hand the idea that the relationship and Mr. Wade’s financing of the couple’s vacations amount to a conflict of interest under Georgia law. But the presiding judge in the matter, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, has indicated that he thinks that it is at least possible that such a conflict exists, depending on what additional details emerge in Thursday’s hearing.“The state has admitted that a relationship existed,” Judge McAfee said earlier this week. “And so what remains to be proven is the existence and extent of any financial benefit — again, if there even was one.”He said that even “the appearance of” a conflict could lead to disqualification. More

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      Georgia Judge Weighs Revoking Bail for a Trump Co-Defendant, Harrison Floyd

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      Prosecutors say the defendant, Harrison Floyd, has been intimidating potential witnesses in the racketeering case with his social media posts.In a fiery courtroom presentation, the prosecutor overseeing the Georgia racketeering case against former President Donald J. Trump argued on Tuesday that one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants had intimidated potential witnesses on social media and should be sent to jail.But Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court chose not to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, the co-defendant. Instead, he signed off on modified terms prohibiting Mr. Floyd from posting further comments about witnesses in the case.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., took the unusual step of personally arguing on behalf of the prosecution, a few days after she filed a motion accusing Mr. Floyd of intimidating an elections worker and other witnesses for the state — including Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger — through his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.Mr. Floyd’s lawyers noted that Mr. Trump himself had issued provocative social media posts about the Georgia case, and that no action had been taken against him. That, they argued, made “the state’s decision to go after Harrison Floyd hard to justify.”They also argued that Mr. Floyd had not been trying to intimidate or threaten anyone with his posts. But they acknowledged by the end of Tuesday’s hearing that he had “walked up close to the line” of violating the terms of his bond.Mr. Floyd, once the head of a group called Black Voices for Trump, was paid by the 2020 Trump campaign. He is one of 19 people, including the former president, who were named as defendants in a 98-page racketeering indictment in August.The indictment charges them with orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Four of the defendants have pleaded guilty and have promised to cooperate with prosecutors.In addition to a state racketeering charge, Mr. Floyd faces two other felony counts in the case, for his role in what the indictment describes as a scheme to intimidate Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County elections worker, and pressure her to falsely claim that she had committed electoral fraud.Ms. Freeman and her daughter were part of a team processing votes in Fulton County on election night in November 2020. Soon after, video images of the two women handling ballots were posted online, and Trump supporters falsely claimed that the video showed them entering bogus votes to skew the election in President Biden’s favor.Ms. Freeman became the target of so many threats that she was forced to leave her home.Her lawyer was a witness for the prosecution at Tuesday’s hearing, producing a report that he said showed a recent “spike” in online mentions of Ms. Freeman. That spike led her to adopt a fresh set of security measures, her lawyer said.Mr. Floyd’s lawyers, John Morrison and Chris Kachouroff, called the effort to revoke his bond “a retaliatory measure” — in part, they said, because Mr. Floyd recently turned down a plea agreement offered by the state. They argued that “tagging” people in posts did not constitute contact with witnesses, and was no different from yelling “a message to someone else sitting on the opposite side of a packed Mercedes-Benz stadium during the middle of an Atlanta Falcons football game.” Ms. Willis responded that “this notion that tagging someone doesn’t get a message to them is really lunacy,” She also called Mr. Floyd’s posts “disgusting,” adding that “what he really did is spit on the court.”And she was explicit about the stakes as she saw them: Election workers, she said, should not be intimidated for doing their jobs.Judge McAfee said that it appeared that Mr. Floyd had committed a “technical violation” of his bond by communicating with witnesses in the case, but seemed reluctant to take the step of jailing Mr. Floyd. “Not every violation compels revocation,” he said.Ms. Willis’s forceful stance on Mr. Floyd’s posts could have repercussions for Mr. Trump, who is enmeshed in battles over gag orders in other civil and criminal cases against him. Mr. Trump’s bond agreement in Georgia specifies that he “shall perform no act,” including social media posts, “to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a co-defendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.”Mr. Floyd was the only one of the original 19 co-defendants in Georgia to spend days in jail in August while waiting to make bond. At Tuesday’s hearing, he cut a colorful figure at the defense table, wearing a green blazer adorned with polo horses. Before the hearing began, he appeared to be reading a book about the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.As the two sides worked out the new terms of the bond agreement, Ms. Willis made a reference to “Trump,” prompting Mr. Floyd to interject, “President Trump.”The judge told Mr. Floyd that it was not his place to talk. More

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      Trump Will Not Seek to Move Georgia Election Case to Federal Court

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      His decision comes after Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, tried unsuccessfully to move his own case from state to federal court.Former President Donald J. Trump will not seek to move the criminal racketeering case against him in Atlanta to federal court, according to a legal filing from his lawyer on Thursday.Mr. Trump was indicted by a grand jury in August, along with 18 of his advisers and allies, after a two-and-a-half year investigation into election interference by the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis. Keeping the case in state court means that any trial for Mr. Trump would be televised, unlike in federal court.“This decision is based on his well-founded confidence that this honorable court intends to fully and completely protect his constitutional right to a fair trial,” Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, wrote in the filing, referring to Fulton County Superior Court, “and guarantee him due process of law throughout the prosecution of his case.”The move comes a few weeks after a federal judge rejected an effort by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, to move his own case to federal court. That decision has been appealed, but it dimmed the chances for successful removal efforts by other defendants, including Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, and three Georgia Republicans who submitted bogus Electoral College votes for the former president in December 2020.Removal is a longstanding practice meant to protect federal officials from state-level prosecution that could impede them from conducting federal business. It is rooted in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which makes federal law “supreme” over contrary state laws.But Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia decided this month that the actions ascribed to Mr. Meadows in the indictment were not within the scope of his federal duties as White House chief of staff. The evidence, he ruled, “establishes that the actions at the heart of the state’s charges against Meadows were taken on behalf of the Trump campaign with an ultimate goal of affecting state election activities and procedures.”Removal to federal court would have provided some advantages for Mr. Trump, including a jury pool somewhat more favorable to him. But he would have faced the same state felony charges.In the Georgia case, all 19 defendants are facing a racketeering charge for their role in what prosecutors have described as a “criminal organization” that sought to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state. Each defendant also faces at least one other charge; Mr. Trump and his former personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, face the most — 13 each.If Mr. Trump ends up going to trial in Fulton County Superior Court, as now seems increasingly likely, the presiding judge will be Scott McAfee, who was recently appointed to the bench.While attending law school at the University of Georgia, Mr. McAfee was a vice president of the school’s chapter of the conservative Federalist Society. He later worked for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, where his supervisor was Ms. Willis.Thus far, Judge McAfee has been moving the court proceedings along briskly, but he has not had the opportunity to make many substantive rulings.When Mr. Trump will actually face trial remains uncertain. Two of the lawyers who worked to keep him in power, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, are set to go to trial on Oct. 23. The two defendants had requested an early trial date, which is their right under Georgia law, though both have been filing a flurry of motions over the last few weeks to dismiss the case, or parts of it.Another lawyer who faces charges, John Eastman, said in a filing on Thursday that he might still invoke his right to a speedy trial. Those not seeking the option may not face trial until the second half of next year, or even later. More

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      Georgia Judge Orders 2 Separate Trials for Defendants in Trump Election Case

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      Two defendants will get a speedy trial starting in October, but the others, including Donald J. Trump, can have more time to prepare, the judge ruled.A judge on Thursday granted former President Donald J. Trump and 16 others a separate trial from two of their co-defendants who will go to trial next month in the Georgia election interference case.The judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, has laid out an expedited trial schedule for Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, two lawyers who helped Mr. Trump try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. The two had invoked their right under Georgia law to seek a speedy trial, in part to avoid the high cost of a more protracted legal fight.Their trial is set to begin with jury selection on Oct. 23. Judge McAfee, in a seven-page order on Thursday, said that he hoped to have a jury seated by Nov. 3 to comply with the speedy trial law.A trial date for Mr. Trump and the other 16 co-defendants has not been set. In his order, Judge McAfee described what was to come as a “mega-trial.” But he also raised the possibility that those 17 might not all be tried together in the end, if some make successful arguments to break off their cases.“Additional divisions of these 17 defendants may well be required,” the judge wrote. “That is a decision for another day once the many anticipated pretrial motions have been resolved and a realistic trial date approaches.”All 19 defendants were charged in August in a wide-ranging state racketeering indictment after an investigation into election interference in Georgia, which Mr. Trump lost in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes. In the weeks after Election Day, Mr. Trump made baseless claims that he was the victim of significant electoral fraud. The indictment says that he and the other 18 defendants were part of a “criminal organization” that sought to overturn his loss in Georgia in various ways.Questions about the size, shape and timing of trials for a case of such magnitude have yet to be fully resolved. The Fulton County District Attorney’s office, which is leading the prosecution, had wanted all 19 defendants to be tried together, arguing in a filing on Tuesday that “breaking this case up into multiple lengthy trials would create an enormous strain on the judicial resources.”But in his order on Thursday, Judge McAfee noted that some lawyers would need more time to prepare. He also noted that the Fulton County courthouse “simply contains no courtroom adequately large enough to hold all 19 defendants.”Further complicating matters is the fact that several defendants are seeking to move their cases to federal court. If just one of them succeeds, there is a possibility that the whole group could be forced into the federal system, although experts say the law on this issue is not clear.Regardless, the prospect of a federal judge presiding over a state trial dimmed somewhat last week, when Judge Steve C. Jones, a U.S. district court judge, rejected a removal request from Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff and a defendant.Mr. Meadows has appealed. Judge Jones is scheduled to hold hearings next week on similar requests from Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who sought to intervene after the Georgia election, and three other co-defendants who served as bogus electors on Mr. Trump’s behalf.Mr. Trump’s lawyer in Georgia, Steven H. Sadow, has indicated in court documents that the former president may also soon ask to have his case moved to federal court.On Thursday morning, as Judge McAfee held a hearing on a number of pretrial motions, tensions between the prosecution and defense were palpable. Brian T. Rafferty, a lawyer for Ms. Powell, accused the district attorney’s office of failing to respond to his request for certain documents as part of the discovery process.At another point, Scott Grubman, a lawyer for Mr. Chesebro, angrily accused Daysha D. Young, a Fulton County assistant district attorney, of engaging in a “personal attack” on Mr. Grubman’s co-counsel, Manny Arora, after Ms. Young mentioned a 2010 incident in which a judge barred Mr. Arora from contacting grand jurors in a separate case.Mr. Chesebro was indicted based on his role as an architect of the bogus electors scheme. His lawyers have called for his case to be dismissed, arguing that he was merely “researching and finding precedents in order to form a legal opinion, which was then supplied to his client, the Trump campaign.”Ms. Powell was indicted on charges relating to the copying of sensitive voter system data in rural Coffee County, Ga., by Trump allies seeking evidence of fraud. On Wednesday, her lawyer filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that county elections officials had allowed access to the elections system there in January 2021.“This means that no data was stolen, there was no fraud, and nothing was done without authorization,” the motion said. More

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      Trump Georgia Case: Defendants Powell and Chesebro to Get Early Trial Together

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      Sidney Powell followed Kenneth Chesebro in demanding a speedy trial, but neither defendant in the election interference case wanted to be tried with the other.Two of Donald J. Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election-interference case will go to trial together on Oct. 23, a judge ruled on Wednesday. The defendants, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, had asked to be tried separately from one another.The ruling from Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, however, is contingent on the case remaining in state court — a situation that could change if other defendants succeed at moving the case into a federal courtroom.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, is still holding out hope that all 19 defendants in the racketeering case can be tried together. One of her prosecutors said during a hearing on Wednesday that the state would take approximately four months to present its case, calling roughly 150 witnesses. That estimate does not include the time it would take to pick the jury.But during the hearing, Judge McAfee said he remained “very skeptical” that a single trial for all 19 defendants could work. For one thing, some of the accused, including Ms. Powell and Mr. Chesebro, have invoked their right to a speedy trial while others have not.The questions raised at the hearing underscore the tremendous logistical challenges prosecutors face in the racketeering case charging the former president and his allies with a multipronged effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. It is one of four criminal trials looming for Mr. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate in the 2024 election.So far, since his indictment in the Georgia case, Mr. Trump’s only request has been to sever his case from those of his co-defendants who are seeking a speedy trial.A federal judge is mulling requests from five defendants to move their cases to federal court. Mr. Chesebro demanded a speedy trial in state court.Ms. Powell made a similar demand soon after, but neither defendant wanted to be tried with the other. Both asked the judge to sever their cases from each other’s.Lawyers for Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell noted that even though their clients were charged with participating in a conspiracy to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia, the two were charged with very different roles in it.Prosecutors say that Mr. Chesebro, a lawyer, took part in a sweeping plot to create slates of fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in several key swing states that he had lost. The charges against Ms. Powell, also a lawyer, stem from her involvement in a data breach by Trump supporters in an elections office in rural Coffee County, Ga.In court filings, Mr. Chesebro’s lawyers argued that the allegations against Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell were “akin to oil and water; wholly separate and impossible to mix (into one conspiracy).” One of the lawyers, Scott Grubman, raised the possibility that the same jury hearing his client’s case would be subjected to weeks, if not months, of testimony about the data breach that he was not involved in.Attorney Brian T. Rafferty, who is defending Sidney Powell, argues before Judge McAfee on Wednesday,Pool photo by Jason GetzBrian T. Rafferty, a lawyer for Ms. Powell, sounded a similar theme, arguing that Ms. Powell’s defense was “going to get washed away” by lengthy discussions about the fake electors scheme.But Will Wooten, a deputy district attorney, argued that Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell were part of the same overarching racketeering conspiracy. “The conspiracy evolved: One thing didn’t work, so we move on to the next thing,” he said. “That thing didn’t work, so we move on to the next thing.”Judge McAfee, in the end, decided that Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell would get a fair trial if tried together. He also noted that it would save time and money to combine them. Still, when or where all 19 defendants will ultimately face trial remains uncertain. The efforts to move the case to federal court have been led by Mark Meadows, a defendant who served as White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump. Such a move would expand the jury pool into suburban counties that are somewhat more supportive of Mr. Trump, and it would increase the likelihood of the United States Supreme Court, a third of whose members were appointed by Mr. Trump, getting involved in potential appeals.Defendants would still be tried under state laws, however, and the case would not be subject to a president’s power to pardon federal crimes.While typically only federal officials can get their cases moved to federal court, it is possible that if even one defendant succeeds at it, the others will come with him or her.Some defendants who were not federal employees at the time the alleged crimes took place are claiming that their role as bogus Trump electors qualifies them for a move to federal court. A lawyer for Shawn Still, a Georgia state senator, argued last month in a legal filing that Mr. Still was acting “in his capacity as a contingent United States presidential elector” and thus “was, or was acting under, an officer of the United States.”Ms. Willis’s office scoffed at that assertion, arguing in a motion filed Tuesday that Mr. Still “and his fellow fraudulent electors conspired in a scheme to impersonate true Georgia presidential electors; their fiction is not entitled to recognition by this Court.”Mr. Trump, like the other defendants, has pleaded not guilty, waiving an arraignment that was supposed to have taken place on Wednesday. He continues to use the Georgia investigation as an opportunity to raise money.“Today was supposed to be my scheduled arraignment in Atlanta,” he wrote to potential donors on Wednesday, adding that, “Instead, I want to make today a massive grassroots fundraising day.” More

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      Why Trial Dates for Trump’s Georgia Case Are So Uncertain

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      Some defendants have already sought to move the case to federal court, while others are seeking speedy or separate trials.Even as former President Donald J. Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case turned themselves in one by one at an Atlanta jail this week, their lawyers began working to change how the case will play out.They are already at odds over when they will have their day in court, but also, crucially, where. Should enough of them succeed, the case could split into several smaller cases, perhaps overseen by different judges in different courtrooms, running on different timelines.Five defendants have already sought to move the state case to federal court, citing their ties to the federal government. The first one to file — Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff during the 2020 election — will make the argument for removal on Monday, in a hearing before a federal judge in Atlanta.Federal officials charged with state crimes can move their cases to federal court if they can convince a judge that they are being charged for actions connected to their official duties, among other things.In the Georgia case, the question of whether to change the venue — a legal maneuver known as removal — matters because it would affect the composition of a jury. If the case stays in Fulton County, Ga., the jury will come from a bastion of Democratic politics where Mr. Trump was trounced in 2020. If the case is removed to federal court, the jury will be drawn from a 10-county region of Georgia that is more suburban and rural — and somewhat more Trump-friendly. Because it takes only one not-guilty vote to hang a jury, this modest advantage could prove to be a very big deal.The coming fights over the proper venue for the case are only one strand of a complicated tangle of efforts being launched by a gaggle of defense lawyers now representing Mr. Trump and the 18 others named in the 98-page racketeering indictment. This week, the lawyers clogged both state and federal court dockets with motions that will also determine when the case begins.Already, one defendant’s case is splitting off as a result. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, has asked for a speedy trial, and the presiding state judge has agreed to it. His trial is now set to begin on Oct. 23. Another defendant, Sidney Powell, filed a similar motion on Friday, and a third, John Eastman, also plans to invoke his right to an early trial, according to one of his lawyers.Soon after Mr. Chesebro set in motion the possibility of an October trial, Mr. Trump, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of going to court so soon, informed the court that he intended to sever his case from the rest of the defendants. Ordering separate trials for defendants in a large racketeering indictment can occur for any number of reasons, and the judge, Scott McAfee, has made clear the early trial date applied only to Mr. Chesebro.Mr. Trump’s move came as no surprise. As the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he is in no hurry to see the Georgia matter, or the other three criminal cases against him, go to trial. In the separate federal election interference case Mr. Trump faces in Washington, D.C., his lawyers have asked that the trial start safely beyond the November 2024 general election — in April 2026.In Georgia, the possibility that even a portion of the sprawling case may go to trial in October remains up in the air. The removal efforts have much to do with that.There is a possibility that if one of the five defendants seeking removal is successful, then all 19 will be forced into federal court. Many legal scholars have noted that the question is unsettled.“We are heading for uncharted territory at this point, and nobody knows for sure what is in this novel frontier,” Donald Samuel, a veteran Atlanta defense attorney who represents one of the defendants in the Trump case, Ray Smith III, wrote in an email. “Maybe a trip to the Supreme Court.”The dizzying legal gamesmanship reflects the unique nature of a case that has swept up a former president, a number of relatively obscure Georgia Republican activists, a former publicist for Kanye West and lawyer-defendants of varying prominence. All bring their own agendas, financial concerns and opinions about their chances at trial.And of course, one of them seeks to regain the title of leader of the free world.Some of the defendants seeking a speedy trial may believe that the case against them is weak. They may also hope to catch prosecutors unprepared, although in this case, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney, has been investigating for two and a half years and has had plenty of time to get ready.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney, has been investigating the case for two and a half years. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAnother reason that some may desire a speedy trial is money.Ms. Willis had originally sought to start a trial in March, but even that seemed ambitious given the complexity of the case. Harvey Silverglate, the lawyer for Mr. Eastman, said he could imagine a scenario in which a verdict might not come for three years.“And Eastman is not a wealthy man,” he said.Mr. Silverglate added that his client “doesn’t have the contributors” that Mr. Trump has. “We are going to seek a severance and a speedy trial. If we have a severance, the trial will take three weeks,” he predicted.How long would a regular racketeering trial take? Brian Tevis, an Atlanta lawyer who negotiated the bond agreement for Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, said that “the defense side would probably want potentially a year or so to catch up.”“You have to realize that the state had a two-year head start,” he said. “They know what they have, no one else knows what they have. No discovery has been turned over, we haven’t even had arraignment yet.”In addition to Mr. Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, is already seeking removal, as is David Shafer, the former head of the Georgia Republican Party; Shawn Still, a Georgia state senator; and Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Republican Party in Coffee County, Ga. Mr. Trump is almost certain to follow, having already tried and failed to have a state criminal case against him in New York moved to federal court.Former President Donald J. Trump informed the court that he intended to sever his case from the rest of the defendants.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe indictment charges Mr. Meadows with racketeering and “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer” for his participation in the Jan. 2, 2021 call in which Mr. Trump told the Georgia secretary of state that he wanted to “find” enough votes to win Georgia. The indictment also describes other efforts by Mr. Meadows that prosecutors say were part of the illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Meadows’s lawyers argue that all of the actions in question were what “one would expect” of a White House chief of staff — “arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the president’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the president” — and that removal is therefore justified.Prosecutors contend that Mr. Meadows was in fact engaging in political activity that was not part of a chief of staff’s job.The issue is likely to be at the heart of Mr. Trump’s removal effort as well: In calling the secretary of state and other Georgia officials after he lost the election, was he working on his own behalf, or in his capacity as president, to ensure that the election had run properly?Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant law professor at Georgia State University, said that the indictment may contain an Easter egg that could spoil Mr. Trump’s argument that he was intervening in the Georgia election as part of his duty as a federal official.The indictment says that the election-reversal scheme lasted through September 2021, when Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to take steps to decertify the election.Mr. Trump, by that point, had been out of federal office for months.“By showing the racketeering enterprise continued well beyond his time in office,” Mr. Kreis said in a text message, “it undercuts any argument that Trump was acting in a governmental capacity to ensure the election was free, fair and accurate.” More

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      Trump Allies, and Possibly Trump, Likely to Be Booked at Notorious Atlanta Jail

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      The local sheriff has said the defendants would be treated like everyone else should they surrender at the jail; the process for Donald J. Trump could be different.To locals, the jail is known simply as “Rice Street.”And over the next nine days, the sprawling Atlanta detention center is where defendants in the racketeering case against Donald J. Trump and his allies will be booked. The local sheriff, who oversees the jail, says that even high-profile defendants like Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, would be treated like everyone else should they surrender there.That means they would undergo a medical screening, be fingerprinted and have mug shots taken, and could spend time in a holding cell at the jail, weeks after the Justice Department announced an investigation for what it called “serious allegations of unsafe, unsanitary living conditions” there.On Wednesday, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office prohibited news media from gathering near the jail as it prepared for the defendants to be processed. Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has said that she wants all 19 people charged in the case to be booked by noon on Aug. 25. Her office has led a two-and-a-half-year investigation into election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies that culminated this week with a 98-page racketeering indictment.The Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday that “at this point, based on guidance received from the district attorney’s office and presiding judge, it is expected that all 19 defendants” would be booked at the Fulton County Jail, as the Rice Street jail is officially called. But whether Mr. Trump himself is processed there will very likely depend on the Secret Service.After surrendering this year in Manhattan, where he has been indicted in an unrelated case, Mr. Trump was allowed to forgo certain procedural steps, including being handcuffed and having his booking photo taken.The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has not described in detail how the booking process will unfold for Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, leaving it unclear if they will truly follow standard operating procedure in one of the highest-profile prosecutions in the state’s history.After the bookings, the defendants will be arraigned in court, where they will hear the charges against them and enter their pleas. On Wednesday, Ms. Willis’s office filed a motion seeking to schedule arraignments for the week of Sept. 5, but the judge assigned to the case, Scott McAfee, will ultimately decide.She is also seeking to start the trial on March 4 of next year, the day before the Super Tuesday primaries. The Sheriff’s Office has said that some arraignments and appearances in the Trump case “may be virtual as dictated by the presiding judge.”The Rice Street jail is not a place for the faint of heart, said Robert G. Rubin, a veteran defense lawyer who has had many clients booked there. In recent weeks, two inmates have been found dead at the jail. Last year, a detainee was found dead in his cell, his body covered in bites from bed bugs and other insects, according to his lawyer.At least two songs on Spotify are titled “901 Rice Street,” the jail’s address. The popular rapper Latto has a song whose title refers to Rice Street with an expletive. And a line from a Killer Mike rap goes, “Locked in like Rice Street without a bond.”Typically, as soon as a defendant surrenders to the police, they go to a holding area with other detainees, Mr. Rubin said. “It’s miserable. It’s cold. It smells. It’s just generally unpleasant,” he said, relying on his clients’ past descriptions. “Plus, there’s a high degree of anxiety for any defendant that’s in that position.”At some point after that comes the booking process, which includes checking to see if the detainee has outstanding warrants. Mr. Rubin says that the computer systems used for such checks sometimes fail, causing delays.Gerald A. Griggs, another Atlanta-area trial lawyer, said the booking process could take “four hours or four days,” although a matter of hours at Rice Street is the most likely scenario for the defendants in the Trump case. That is because their lawyers will have probably negotiated their bond with prosecutors before turning themselves in, obviating the need for a bond hearing before a judge.History suggests that the Trump defendants could receive some special treatment. Both Mr. Griggs and Mr. Rubin represented clients in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case, which targeted a number of teachers and educators who were accused of changing students’ standardized test scores. Both lawyers said their educator clients were allowed to stay in detention areas segregated from the general jail population.Mr. Griggs said he could foresee that happening with the Trump case defendants, on the grounds that the high-profile nature of their case may heighten the chance that they could be targets of violence.The Rice Street jail is about four miles northwest of the downtown Atlanta courthouse where the indictment against Mr. Trump and his allies was handed up by a grand jury late Monday night. The high-rise building is set amid stands of trees and cannot be seen from the entrance to the front parking lot.The immediate surroundings are weedy and industrial, with a few bail bond companies and bus stops within walking distance. Some of the nearby residential streets are dotted with forlorn and boarded-up homes.The sheriff department’s decision to close off the parking lot in front of the main jail entrance came as a shock to veteran local reporters. For years, news crews and reporters have set up there to record the comings and goings of high-profile defendants.On Wednesday morning, a photographer for The New York Times was waiting at a second jail entrance identified as an “intake center.” She was told by a sheriff’s deputy to leave her position on a public street, and when she protested she was soon surrounded by three other law enforcement officers on motorcycles.Mr. Rubin says that he advises his clients to prepare for the experience by showing up at Rice Street in comfortable clothes with minimal personal belongings, which will likely be confiscated for the duration of their stay. More