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      Harrison Floyd, Last Defendant in Trump Election Interference Case in Georgia, Is Granted Bond

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      Harrison William Prescott Floyd, who once led a group called Black Voices for Trump, was held longer at an Atlanta jail after turning himself in, apparently because he showed up to his booking without a lawyer.Harrison William Prescott Floyd, a supporter of Donald J. Trump’s who was indicted along with the former president in the Georgia election interference case, was granted a $100,000 bond on Tuesday, the last of the 19 defendants in the case to reach a bond agreement.While the other defendants named in the indictment, including Mr. Trump, made only brief visits to an Atlanta jail in recent days to be booked, Mr. Floyd, 39, who once led a group called Black Voices for Trump, spent a number of days at the jail after turning himself in last Thursday, apparently because he showed up to his booking without a lawyer.As of Tuesday evening, Fulton County inmate records showed that Mr. Floyd had not yet been released. Neither Mr. Floyd nor the lawyer who eventually signed up to represent him, Todd A. Harding, could be reached for comment on Tuesday.Mr. Floyd, who also goes by Willie Lewis Floyd III, is accused of being involved in a scheme to extract a confession of election fraud from Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker, as Mr. Trump and a number of his supporters searched for evidence of fraud so that they could derail Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential vote.The targeting of Ms. Freeman, a Black woman in her 60s, is one of the stranger narratives that form the basis of the 98-page state indictment. Shortly after the election, right-wing commentators began spreading unfounded accusations of wrongdoing by Ms. Freeman, based on security-camera footage of her counting votes at a downtown Atlanta sports arena.Mr. Trump joined in, mentioning Ms. Freeman by name in his now-famous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. During the call, he labeled Ms. Freeman as a “a professional vote scammer and hustler” and told Mr. Raffensperger that he wanted to “find” roughly 12,000 votes in Georgia — just enough for him to win the state.Two days later, a Trump supporter named Trevian Kutti persuaded Ms. Freeman to meet her at a police station in Cobb County, Ga., outside Atlanta. Ms. Kutti warned Ms. Freeman that an event would soon occur that would “disrupt” her “freedom,” according to police body-camera video of the meeting. Ms. Kutti also offered vague assurances of help, telling Ms. Freeman that she was going to call a man who had “authoritative powers to get you protection.”Ms. Freeman then called Mr. Floyd. According to Reuters, Ms. Freeman said that Mr. Floyd had tried to pressure her into saying that she had committed voter fraud. Ms. Kutti warned her that she would go to jail if she did not “tell everything,” Ms. Freeman told the news outlet.All 19 defendants in the sprawling Georgia indictment, including Mr. Trump, are charged with racketeering in connection with what prosecutors call a “criminal organization” whose aim was to unlawfully reverse the former president’s election loss in the state. They all face at least one other charge; Mr. Floyd is charged with influencing a witness and conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writings.Mr. Floyd was previously arrested in February on charges of attacking a federal agent involved in the Justice Department’s investigation into the 2020 election, The Washington Post reported last week. More

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      What Fani Willis Got Wrong in Her Trump Indictment

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      By assembling a sprawling, 19-defendant RICO indictment with 41 counts, District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County has brought the sort of charging instrument that has typically led to monthslong trials, complicated appeals and exhaustion for the participating attorneys. Now, as some co-defendants seek federal removal while others demand speedy trials in state court, we are starting to see the costs of complexity.In federal and state cases, Donald Trump’s legal game plan has always been the same: delay often and everywhere with the goal of winning the 2024 election and hoping the charges go away. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election interference indictment — just four counts brought solely against Mr. Trump — makes that difficult. On Monday, the judge set the trial for March 4, 2024.By contrast, the Georgia indictment is a sprawling account of a conspiracy among the former president, his closest advisers and state and local Republican officials to change the outcome of the 2020 Georgia election through an escalating series of falsehoods. For many, it is a satisfying political document. But as a legal instrument, its ambitious scope will provide the co-defendants with many opportunities for delay, appeals, and constitutional challenges.And even though Fulton might very will win in the end, a simpler, more direct approach would likely lead to a better result, faster, here’s why.Much of the Georgia indictment is about how Mr. Trump and others tried to get public officials to do implausible things to hand him the election — things like asking state senators to appoint an alternate slate of electors, calling a special session of the General Assembly or asking the secretary of state to “find” the votes Mr. Trump needed to win.The state chose to charge this conduct in two ways. One of them is strong and simple: Team Trump lied to elected officials and tried to forge documents.The other — that they were aware of the officials’ oaths of office and were hoping specifically to get them to violate it — is unusual and hard to prove.Solicitation requires you to ask someone else to commit a felony intentionally. In this case, the oath of office the defendants were being asked to violate was a promise to follow the Constitution and do what’s best for their constituents. It is indeed a crime in Georgia for a public officer to “willfully and intentionally” violate the terms of his oath.Here’s the problem: It’s hard enough to prove that Mr. Trump’s request violates the Constitution, since the Constitution allows states to figure out how to select electors. But then the state must also prove that Mr. Trump knew this would violate the electors’ oath of office.It seems possible that Mr. Trump had no idea what these officials’ oath of office was, maybe even no idea that they swore an oath at all. Under Georgia’s “mistake of fact” affirmative defense, if Mr. Trump has some evidence that he was operating under a “misapprehension of fact” that would justify his actions, the state must disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt.There are a few reasons this could be a strong defense. First, Mr. Trump surrounded himself with individuals who told him what he was doing was legal. Georgia does not normally have an “advice of counsel” defense, but in this context it seems relevant that people he apparently trusted were not telling him this would violate any oath of office.And to put it gently, Mr. Trump is plausibly ignorant on a variety of subjects, ranging from how hurricanes are formed to whether it’s a good idea to use or inject disinfectants as a possible Covid cure. Even if prosecutors can meet the burden of showing that what he requested was unconstitutional — not necessarily an easy thing to establish with a jury of non-lawyers — it may be difficult to prove that Donald Trump knew, or cared, what the Constitution had to say on the subject.Then there’s the Hawaii precedent. Mr. Trump’s advisers were relying on an incident from the 1960 presidential election, when Richard Nixon looked as though he had won the state of Hawaii by a few dozen votes. But the results were so uncertain that three Democrats submitted their Electoral College votes just in case, and when, after a recount, it looked like John F. Kennedy was the actual winner, the Senate (headed by Nixon) unanimously agreed to the alternate slate.Even though no court ever blessed this procedure, or even held that it wasn’t criminal, Mr. Trump’s team could argue with a straight face that they believed their request was legally possible.There’s also the possibility of a First Amendment defense. Typically, people are allowed to petition the government to do things, even unconstitutional things. That a court might, down the line, find those things to be unconstitutional seems like a dangerous basis to criminalize that petitioning.I’d understand bringing these charges to get at some obviously bad and immoral conduct by the president if there were nothing else available. But there are other, much stronger charges in the same indictment without the same constitutional concerns. Take the false statement counts: The very best case that Mr. Trump and his team could cite is United States v. Alvarez, where the Supreme Court held that there is a First Amendment right to lie about having received the Medal of Honor. But the Supreme Court also specifically said that this protection vanishes when lying for material gain, or to the government.Rudy Giuliani told state legislators that election workers were passing around flash drives like “vials of heroin” and that thousands of dead and felonious voters participated, but he can’t claim those statements have constitutional protection. All Mr. Giuliani can do is show the court what evidence supported those statements. There is none. And what’s more, Mr. Giuliani recently admitted in a civil filing that his claims against two Fulton County election workers had been false. Despite claiming that it was for “this litigation only,” that’s an admission.Similarly, the forgery charges simply need to establish a conspiracy to create fake elector votes that could potentially be counted on Jan. 6. It’s irrelevant whether the parties thought it was legal to do this, so long as they knew they were not, in fact, the duly appointed electors.So it is an odd legal choice to drag a jury through weak, disputed counts in a monthslong trial when you could just focus on the counts that are hard to challenge and easy to explain, saving weeks in the process. The RICO count will already require dozens of witnesses and some complicated instructions, so tossing in these oath of office charges seems like a recipe for confusion and delay.And it’s not just the charges that complicate things, but the sheer number of defendants. A judge granted one co-defendant, Ken Chesebro, a speedy trial, which will require Fulton County to bring this case to trial by Nov. 3 or acquit him as a matter of law. (Sidney Powell has also requested a speedy trial.)Ms. Willis reacted by requesting an October date for the entire case, but at least for the moment, a judge has declined her request. This puts the prosecutors in a bind. Mr. Chesebro’s trial would give Mr. Trump a useful preview of the entire case, from voir dire to closing arguments, which could weaken the effectiveness of Ms. Willis’s prosecution of Mr. Trump and the other defendants. It would allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers to dig into witness testimony and perhaps encourage Georgia Republicans to step in.Additionally, it might be very difficult for Fulton County to actually grant these parties the speedy trial they’ve requested. There is some Georgia authority to suggest that a trial does not “begin” under the statutory speedy trial act until a jury is empaneled and sworn. What happens if Fulton County needs a month, or two months, to actually select the jury that will be sworn?And for all the talk of potentially flipping co-defendants, many of the people in this case don’t have all that much criminal exposure. With no mandatory minimums for prison time and no criminal history, many of the participants could reasonably expect probation, and maybe even a first-offender sentence that would not count as a felony. A simpler case, with fewer co-defendants, would go more swiftly, with less legal uncertainty.As a general, George Washington was known for unworkable battle plans. Where an ordinary commander might send all his troops to one location at one time, Washington would split them into three columns, expecting them to arrive all at one spot with precision timing. It rarely worked out. Despite those mistakes, he’s now best known for winning.For all the potential problems with this indictment, I would still expect Ms. Willis to secure a conviction against Mr. Trump on one or more counts if this case goes to trial as it intends.But there are a dozen ways that things can go sideways, and it is very possible that history will remember the two years that Fulton County took to bring these charges as a wasted opportunity to make a simpler case.Andrew Fleischman is an attorney at Sessions & Fleischman in Atlanta.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Mark Meadows Testifies in Bid to Move Georgia Trump Case to Federal Court

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      Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff, told a judge he believed his actions regarding the 2020 election fell within the scope of his job as a federal official.A battle over whether to move the Georgia racketeering case against Donald J. Trump and his allies to federal court began in earnest on Monday, when Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff, testified in favor of such a move before a federal judge in Atlanta.Under questioning by his own lawyers and by prosecutors, Mr. Meadows stated emphatically that he believed that his actions detailed in the indictment fell within the scope of his duties as chief of staff. But he also appeared unsure of himself at times, saying often that he could not recall details of events in late 2020 and early 2021. “My wife will tell you sometimes that I forget to take out the trash,” he told Judge Steve C. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.At another point during the daylong hearing, he asked whether he was properly complying with the judge’s instructions, saying, “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”The effort to shift the case to federal court is the first major legal fight since the indictment of Mr. Trump, Mr. Meadows and 17 others was filed by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga. The indictment charges Mr. Trump and his allies with interfering in the 2020 presidential election in the state. Mr. Meadows is one of several defendants who are trying to move the case; any ruling on the issue could apply to all 19 defendants.Mr. Meadows testified that Mr. Trump directed him to set up the now-famous phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, between Mr. Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state. During the call — a focus of the case — Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Raffensperger and said he wanted to “find” nearly 12,000 more Trump votes, enough to reverse his defeat in Georgia.Mr. Meadows said Mr. Trump wanted to make the call because he believed that fraud had occurred, and wanted to resolve questions about the ballot signature verification process. “We all want accurate elections,” Mr. Meadows said at one point.Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican who is the state’s top elections official, also testified after being subpoenaed by the prosecution. He recounted how he had ignored earlier calls from Mr. Meadows — he said he “didn’t think it was appropriate” to talk to him while Mr. Trump was contesting the state’s results — and initially tried to avoid the Jan. 2 call with Mr. Trump. Under questioning by the prosecution, he characterized it as “a campaign call.”“Outreach to this extent was extraordinary,” he said of the calls from Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump.Monday’s hearing marked a dramatic inflection point in the case: Mr. Meadows, one of the highest-profile defendants, faced Fulton County prosecutors for the first time. Mr. Raffensperger recounted the threats against him, his wife and election workers after Mr. Trump made unfounded allegations about Georgia voter fraud. And Mr. Trump’s distinctive voice filled the courtroom as prosecutors played snippets of the Jan. 2 call.“We won the state,” Mr. Trump said.If the effort to move the case to federal court succeeds, it could benefit the Trump side by broadening the jury pool beyond Fulton County into outlying counties where the former president has somewhat more support.It could also slow down at least some of the proceedings. If the case remains in state court, three of the defendants are likely to face trial starting in October. Kenneth Chesebro has already been granted an early trial, and Sidney Powell has sought the same. A lawyer for John Eastman, another defendant, has said he, too, will seek a speedy trial.Removing a case to federal court requires persuading a judge that the actions under scrutiny were carried out by federal officers as part of their official business. Earlier this year, Mr. Trump failed in his attempt to move a New York State criminal case against him to federal court; his argument in that case was seen as particularly tenuous.Mr. Meadows was cross-examined by Anna Cross, a veteran prosecutor who has worked for district attorneys in three Atlanta area counties. She continually pressed him on what kind of federal policy or interest he was advancing in carrying out what prosecutors have described in court documents as political acts in service of the Trump campaign — and thus not grounds for removal to federal court.Mr. Meadows and his lawyers argue that the job of chief of staff sometimes seeps into the realm of politics by its very nature, and that the local district attorney is essentially operating beyond her power by seeking to delineate what a powerful federal official’s job should and should not be.Ms. Cross noted to Mr. Meadows that he had visited suburban Cobb County, Ga., where a ballot audit was taking place, after a meeting with William P. Barr, who was then the U.S. attorney general. During the meeting, Mr. Barr dismissed election fraud claims as unsupported by facts. Mr. Meadows replied that in his mind, there were still allegations worthy of investigation.The arguments echoed those made in filings before the hearing by the prosecution and Mr. Meadows’s lawyers. Mr. Meadows, along with all 18 other defendants, is charged with racketeering. Along with Mr. Trump, he is also accused of soliciting Mr. Raffensperger to violate his oath of office. (Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, has written that he felt he was being pressured to “fudge the numbers.”)During his testimony, Mr. Meadows discussed the trip he made to Cobb County during its audit of signatures on mail-in absentee ballots. He was turned away after trying to get into the room where state investigators were verifying the signatures. Mr. Meadows said he had been in the area visiting his children who live there, and went to the auditing location because he was “anticipating” that Mr. Trump would eventually bring up the Cobb County review. He said what he found was “a very professional operation.”The case continues to move forward in state court. On Monday, the judge, Scott McAfee, scheduled arraignments of Mr. Trump and the other defendants for Sept. 6. It is possible that some or all of the arraignments will not be conducted in person, given the heightened security requirements involving a former president.For the next few weeks at least, the case will be wrangled by two different judges working in courthouses a few blocks apart in downtown Atlanta. Judge McAfee, of Fulton County Superior Court, is an appointee of Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and a member of the conservative Federalist Society, though he also once worked for Ms. Willis and is well regarded by many lawyers on both sides of the case.Judge Jones, an Obama appointee, has been moving quickly regarding the removal question. In 2019, he upheld Georgia’s purge of nearly 100,000 names from its voter rolls, over the objections of liberal activists. In 2020, he blocked a six-week abortion ban from taking effect in the state.The Georgia case is the fourth criminal indictment of Mr. Trump this year. If Mr. Trump is elected president again, he could theoretically try to pardon himself for any federal convictions. But regardless of whether the Georgia case is tried in state or federal court, it concerns state crimes, which are beyond the pardon power of presidents.Christian Boone More

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      Former Justice Department Official Is Booked in Trump Georgia Case

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      As of late Friday morning, only one of the 19 defendants in the state election interference case involving former President Donald J. Trump had yet to turn himself in.Jeffrey A. Clark, the former high-ranking Justice Department official criminally charged in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss in that state, was booked at the Fulton County Jail early on Friday, a few hours after the former president’s dramatic booking at the same Atlanta facility.After Mr. Clark’s surrender and that of another defendant, Trevian C. Kutti, only one of the 19 defendants in the state election interference case — Stephen C. Lee, an Illinois pastor — had yet to turn himself in as of late Friday morning. The office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis gave the defendants a deadline of noon Friday to turn themselves in. After that point, arrest warrants for outstanding defendants would be put into effect.Mr. Clark, a former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, was released on a $100,000 bond. In addition to the state racketeering charge, he faces a felony charge of criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings, based on a letter he wanted to send in December 2020 to state officials in Georgia that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” that would affect the state’s election results.Several of the defendants, including Mr. Clark, are seeking to have their cases shifted to federal court, a relatively uncommon step that is known as removal. Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones rejected efforts by Mr. Clark and another defendant, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, to prevent them from being booked at the county jail while they were seeking removal of their cases to federal court.Ms. Kutti, a music publicist who prosecutors say harassed an election worker on Mr. Trump’s behalf, surrendered to the jail on Friday morning and was booked into the jail’s system, online records showed. She was released on $75,000 bond. Ms. Kutti has represented musicians like R. Kelly and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye, in the past. More

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      Trump Surrenders at Atlanta Jail in Georgia Election Interference Case

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      Mr. Trump spent about 20 minutes at the jail, getting fingerprinted and having his mug shot taken for the first time in the four criminal cases he has faced this year.Former President Donald J. Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Thursday and was booked on 13 felony charges for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.It was an extraordinary scene: a former U.S. president who flew on his own jet to Atlanta and surrendered at a jail compound surrounded by concertina wire and signs that directed visitors to the “prisoner intake” area.As Mr. Trump’s motorcade of black S.U.V.s drove to the jail through cleared streets, preceded by more than a dozen police motorcycles — a trip captured by news helicopters and broadcast live on national television — two worlds collided in ways never before seen in American political history. The nation’s former commander in chief walked into a notorious jail, one that has been cited in rap lyrics and is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation into unsanitary and unsafe conditions, including allegations that an “incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth.”The case is the fourth brought against Mr. Trump this year, but Thursday was the first time that he was booked at a jail.Mr. Trump spent about 20 minutes there, submitting to some of the routines of criminal defendant intake. He was fingerprinted and had his mug shot taken. He was assigned an identification number, P01135809. But the process was faster than for most defendants; minutes after he entered the jail, Mr. Trump’s record appeared in Fulton County’s booking system, which listed him as having “blond or strawberry” hair, a height of 6 feet 3 inches and a weight of 215 pounds — 24 pounds less than the White House doctor reported Mr. Trump weighing in 2018.Mr. Trump’s motorcade arriving at the Fulton County jail.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesHis form was filled out in advance by aides, according to someone familiar with the preparations, not by officials at the jail.Outside, supporters and detractors of Mr. Trump had gathered all day in the swampy Atlanta heat. The news media was kept at bay. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office barred reporters from accessing the parking lot in front of the jail’s main entrance, a break with tradition.Before leaving Atlanta on his plane, Mr. Trump was defiant. The Georgia case, he said, was a “travesty of justice.”“We have every right to challenge an election we think is dishonest,” he said.The former president’s bond in the case was set at $200,000 on Monday, and he used a commercial bondsman, Charles Shaw of Foster Bail Bonds, to post his bond in exchange for $20,000, the bondsman confirmed.In a last minute shake-up of his legal team before he surrendered on Thursday, Mr. Trump hired Steven H. Sadow, a veteran criminal defense lawyer in Atlanta whose clients have included prominent rappers. In a filing to the court, Mr. Sadow said he was now “lead counsel of record for Donald John Trump.”Lawyers on both sides of the case filed a flurry of legal motions on Thursday. After one of the 19 defendants, the lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, demanded a speedy trial, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is prosecuting the case, asked a judge to set a trial date of Oct. 23, months earlier than she had originally sought.The Fulton County jail in Atlanta.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesMr. Trump objected to that timing, an indication that he wants to move more slowly. The judge approved the October trial date, but only for Mr. Chesebro. The ultimate date of any trial, however, will not be clear until efforts by some of the defendants to move the case to federal court are resolved.Mr. Trump is at the top of the list of 19 defendants in the indictment released last week. Prosecutors used a state version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, that they hope will allow them to show the ways in which Mr. Trump and several of his allies worked together toward the common goal of seeking to overturn the results of the election in Georgia.The RICO statute is often used against the mafia and street gangs. In the Georgia indictment, Mr. Trump and his co-defendants are accused of impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, conspiracy to defraud the state and “acts involving theft,” among other crimes.The indictment lays out the broadest set of accusations leveled against the former president so far. Georgia’s racketeering law can carry criminal penalties of between five and 20 years in prison.It is the second case centered on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith, the special counsel, brought the other, a federal case, earlier in August.Ms. Willis began her investigation after a recording of Mr. Trump was released in which he told Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, that he wanted to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than he needed to win the state and its Electoral College votes. Mr. Trump later described the call to Mr. Raffensperger as “absolutely perfect.”Protesters and supporters of Mr. Trump clashed outside the jail ahead of his arrival. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesHis defiance in the face of the four cases lodged against him has provided political oxygen for his campaign and a significant fund-raising windfall.After his first indictment in March, which charged him in a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal, Mr. Trump’s campaign reported raising $15 million in the two weeks that followed.In June, an indictment in Miami that centered on classified documents was followed by $7 million in fund-raising, Mr. Trump’s campaign reported.Hours before he was set to be booked on Thursday, Mr. Trump sent out a fund-raising email. “This arrest — and every one of these four sham indictments,” he wrote, “have all been designed to strike fear into the hearts of the American people, to intimidate you out of voting to save your country and ultimately, to interfere in the 2024 election.”In four recent polls, a majority of respondents said the criminal charges against Mr. Trump were warranted. But at the same time, Mr. Trump’s standing among Republican voters is strong, and he is holding onto a considerable lead against his Republican primary rivals.He declined to take part in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign on Wednesday, which featured eight of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination. Bret Baier, one of the debate’s moderators on Fox News, quipped that Mr. Trump was the “elephant not in the room.”A crowd began to gather outside the jail early Thursday morning.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMr. Trump is also neck and neck against President Biden in recent polls. A Quinnipiac University poll this month showed him trailing Mr. Biden by a single percentage point, 47 percent to 46 percent, in a hypothetical rematch. Mr. Biden’s advantage was five percentage points in July.Outside the Fulton County jail, supporters of Mr. Trump came early in the day, hoping for a glimpse of the former president. Rick Hearn, 44, an Atlanta accountant, brought a poster with him that showed an image of Mr. Trump next to one of Nelson Mandela, with the label “political prisoners.”“I feel like I needed to be a part of this,” Mr. Hearn said,“Those in charge,” he added, need to know that they cannot “take away our rights and get away with it.”Alan Feuer More

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      Trump Was Booked in Georgia. What’s Next in Election Interference Case?

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      The booking of former President Donald J. Trump at the Fulton County Jail on Wednesday is only the start of a long legal battle, made more complex by the case’s large number of other defendants.The next step is arraignment — a formal first appearance before a judge to be formally charged, set bail and enter a plea. The Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, has asked the court to hold the arraignments the week of Sept. 5.Mr. Trump avoided having to wait in jail before appearing in court by negotiating a bail agreement in advance, and it is possible he will waive his right to appear at an arraignment.In fact, all 19 people indicted in the case have the right to waive their arraignments. Doing so would avoid their having to return to Atlanta to appear in court, should the presiding judge, Scott McAfee, agree to such a plan.The arraignment process is a starting bell, of sorts. The judge in the case will set a schedule for pretrial motions, which are expected to be plentiful. Defendants generally have 10 days after their arraignments to make pretrial motions, or requests for rulings they want the court to take before a trial.Three defendants have already filed petitions to move the trial to federal court.But even if the case remains in state court, one can expect other motions, such as ones to suppress certain evidence and perhaps to sever some of the defendants from the main case and try them separately. In addition, before the trial starts, there will be copious amounts of evidence that must be turned over to the defense by the prosecution — a process known as discovery — which can take time, especially in white-collar cases involving lots of documents, phone records and security camera footage.Defense lawyers may also see if there are grounds for what are known as demurrers, or requests to the court to dismiss the indictment. They can argue, for instance, that the indictment fails to include all the elements of the crimes charged, or that the grand jury was improperly composed.All these motions take time to litigate, and with so many defendants, merely scheduling hearings and court dates will be difficult.In what could be another wrinkle, some defendants might choose to plead guilty or even cooperate with the prosecution, and each of those decisions would be the result of negotiations with the Fulton County district attorney’s office.At the same time, what is known as “a speedy trial clock” will be running. In Georgia, criminal defendants must be brought to trial within the second court term, after their arrest, though the court terms — the period of time a court is in session — vary from county to county, and delays are possible if all parties agree. In Fulton County, where this case was filed, terms in the Superior Court are generally for two months, so to meet the state’s speedy trial law the trial would have to be held by Nov. 3.Some of the defendants, for tactical reasons, may also make a formal demand for a speedy trial, hoping to pressure prosecutors and give them less time to prepare. One of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, Kenneth Chesebro, has already done so.On Thursday, Ms. Willis responded to Mr. Chesebro’s demand by asking the court to start the trial on Oct. 23.A speedy trial would apply to all 19 people indicted in the case. But since some defendants are seeking to move the case to federal court or have said they will seek to sever their cases, the timing of any trial or trials is unclear. Mr. Trump filed a motion on Thursday afternoon saying that he would seek to have his case severed from Mr. Chesebro’s or from that of any other defendant who seeks a speedy trial. More

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      Trump’s Bail Set at $200,000 in Georgia Election Interference Case

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      Mr. Trump, who said he would turn himself in on Thursday, was told not to intimidate or threaten any witnesses or co-defendants in the case.A judge in Atlanta set bail for former President Donald J. Trump at $200,000 on Monday in the new election interference case against him, warning Mr. Trump not to intimidate or threaten witnesses or any of his 18 co-defendants as a condition of the bond agreement.Mr. Trump, who posted on Truth Social that he would surrender to the authorities in Atlanta on Thursday, is also sorting out logistical details in three other criminal cases that have been filed against him this year. Earlier in the day, federal prosecutors pushed back on a request from his lawyers to postpone a separate election interference trial in Washington, D.C., until at least April 2026.Under his bond agreement in Georgia, Mr. Trump cannot communicate with any co-defendants in the case except through his lawyers. He was also directed to “make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community,” including “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual.”The terms were more extensive than those set for other defendants in the case so far, which did not specifically mention social media. In the past, Mr. Trump has made inflammatory and sometimes false personal attacks on Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, who is leading the case.Bond was set at $100,000 for John Eastman, one of the architects of a plan to use fake electors to keep Mr. Trump in power. according to court filings; a lawyer for Kenneth Chesebro, who also developed that plan, said the same amount was set for Mr. Chesebro.Mr. Trump’s attacks continued on Monday ahead of his bond being set. In a post on Truth Social, he called Ms. Willis “crooked, incompetent, & highly partisan” and wrote that she “has allowed Murder and other Violent Crime to MASSIVELY ESCALATE.” In fact, homicides have fallen sharply in Atlanta in the first half of the year.From front left, Donald Trump’s lawyers Marissa Goldberg, Jennifer Little and Drew Findling outside the Fulton County Government Center in Atlanta.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Trump did not have to pay bail in the other criminal cases against him, the agreements posted for him and several of his co-defendants in Georgia on Monday require five- and six-figure sums. The defendants have to come up with only 10 percent of the bail amount, but even that could prove difficult for some, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, who is running out of money because of an array of legal entanglements.Racketeering cases like this one can be particularly long and costly for defendants — in another racketeering case in the same court, involving a number of high-profile rappers, jury selection alone has gone on for seven months.The costs clearly worry some of the defendants in the Trump case; one of them, Cathy Latham, a former Republican Party official in Georgia who acted as a fake elector for Mr. Trump in 2020, has set up a legal-defense fund, describing herself as “a retired public-school teacher living on a teacher’s pension.” The $3,645 she has initially raised is well short of a $500,000 goal.Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who assisted Mr. Giuliani in his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost in 2020, expressed frustration over the looming legal costs a few days after her indictment in the case. “Why isn’t MAGA, Inc. funding everyone’s defense?” she asked last week on X, formerly known as Twitter.Mr. Trump and the other defendants were indicted last week on charges that they were part of a conspiracy to subvert the election results in Georgia, where Mr. Trump narrowly lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.The Fulton County jail in Atlanta, where Mr. Trump will be booked.Audra Melton for The New York TimesThe indictment laid out eight ways the defendants were accused of trying to reverse the election results as part of a “criminal enterprise”: by lying to the Georgia legislature, lying to state officials, creating fake pro-Trump electors to circumvent the popular vote, harassing election workers, soliciting Justice Department officials, soliciting Vice President Mike Pence, breaching voting machines and engaging in a cover-up.Mr. Trump has not been required to pay cash bail in the three other criminal cases he has been charged in this year — one in Manhattan and two federal cases brought by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in Miami and Washington, D.C.In Atlanta, prosecutors and law enforcement officials have emphasized a desire to treat the defendants as other accused felons would typically be treated in the city’s criminal justice system, with mug shots, fingerprinting and cash bails. But the Secret Service is sure to have security demands regarding the booking of a former president.On Monday, lawyers for a number of the defendants were seen walking in and out of a complex of connected government buildings, including the Fulton County courthouse and a government office building, where they met with representatives from the district attorney’s office. The lawyers had little to say, including about when Mr. Trump might surrender.“You’ll find out everything soon enough,” Drew Findling, Mr. Trump’s lead local lawyer, told reporters. “Patience is a virtue.”The lawyer Scott Grubman, left, who is representing Kenneth Chesebro, outside the Fulton County Courthouse on Monday.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesMs. Ellis worked with Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the election, traveling with him to various states to push claims of widespread fraud that were quickly debunked. But she has been a target of online attacks by allies of Mr. Trump for months, as she has been critical of the former president and has made supportive statements about his closest competitor in the Republican presidential primary, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.“I was reliably informed Trump isn’t funding any of us who are indicted,” Ms. Ellis posted on X last week. “Would this change if he becomes the nominee? Why then, not now?”Asked about her post, Ms. Ellis replied in a text message, “Mounting a defense in these circumstances is exorbitantly expensive. I don’t have great personal wealth and am doing this on my own. I have been overwhelmed and blessed with the generosity and support of Christians and conservatives across the nation who want to help me.”A person briefed on the matter said that Ms. Ellis had not asked for help from a legal-defense fund formed recently by Mr. Trump’s advisers but that she had sought help earlier and had been denied.Mr. Trump has used a political action committee that is aligned with him, and that is replete with money he raised in small-dollar donations as he falsely claimed he was fighting widespread fraud after the 2020 election, to pay the legal bills of a number of allies, as well as his own.But other defendants have been denied help with mounting legal bills long before they were charged. Among those asking for help are Mr. Giuliani; Mr. Trump’s political action committee, which has spent roughly $21 million on legal fees primarily for Mr. Trump but also for others connected to investigations into him, has so far covered only $340,000 for Mr. Giuliani.All 19 defendants are required to turn themselves in by noon on Friday.“The order said it had to be by Friday, I believe, and he plans to follow the order,” Mr. Grubman said of Mr. Chesebro.Sean Keenan contributed reporting from Atlanta. More

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      Georgia Case Against Young Thug Hints at How Trump Case Could Unfold

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      The racketeering case against Young Thug has been marked by a plodding pace, an avalanche of pretrial defense motions and pressure on lower-level defendants to plead guilty.On its face, the criminal case accusing former President Donald J. Trump and 18 of his allies of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia has little in common with the other high-profile racketeering case now underway in the same Atlanta courthouse: that of the superstar rapper Young Thug and his associates.But the 15-month-old gang case against Young Thug — which, like the Trump case, is being prosecuted by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney — offers glimpses of how State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump et al. may unfold: with a plodding pace, an avalanche of pretrial defense motions, extraordinary security measures, pressure on lower-level defendants to plead guilty, and a fracturing into separate trials, to name a few.Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, was indicted in May 2022 along with 27 others under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, known as RICO. Like Mr. Trump’s RICO indictment, the charging papers described a corrupt “enterprise” whose members shared common illegal goals.Prosecutors claim that Mr. Williams is a founder of Young Slime Life, or YSL, a criminal street gang whose members were responsible for murders and other violence, drug dealing and property crimes, with the purpose of illegally obtaining “money and property.” (The defendants say YSL is simply a record label.)But the case against Mr. Williams has been whittled to eight defendants, from an initial 28. Some defendants have had their cases severed because they struggled to find lawyers or were fugitives from justice, among other reasons. As is common in big racketeering cases, others have accepted plea deals, making admissions along the way that could help prosecutors in their effort to convict the remaining defendants.After raucous courtroom outbursts from fans and a number of bizarre incidents — including alleged efforts to smuggle drugs into court — security has been ratcheted up, with members of the public and the news media barred from the courtroom.And remarkably, the case has been stuck in the jury selection phase since January, with many potential jurors claiming they would suffer hardships if forced to participate in a trial that was originally estimated to last six to 12 months. On Thursday morning, a young woman — one of more than 2,000 potential jurors to come through the courthouse doors — was grilled about her life, her future plans to pursue medical training and whether serving would present a hardship.Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, was indicted in May 2022 along with 27 others under the state’s RICO law.Steve Schaefer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via A.P.She said it would not. When asked if she knew of Young Thug, she said she did, and that she liked his music — which, she added, would make hearing the case “surreal,” although she also said she could be fair-minded.The YSL indictment is significantly more complex than the Trump case, describing nearly 200 criminal acts as part of a bloody gang war that played out for at least eight years in a city considered to be a hotbed of music industry innovation. The authorities have said that a crosstown rivalry between YSL and a gang called YFN was exacerbated in 2015 with the murder of Donovan Thomas, a behind-the-scenes connector instrumental in several rap careers.In the aftermath of the killing, the authorities say, many in the city picked sides as retaliatory shootings spilled across Atlanta.It is a world far removed from White House meetings and voting software. But experts say the Trump case, with its own famous lead defendant and sprawling nature, could encounter some similar complications.In Mr. Trump’s indictment, prosecutors also outlined a “criminal organization,” made up of power players like Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and obscure Trump supporters like Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman who was charged with helping to carry out a data breach at a rural Georgia elections office.The Trump team’s shared goal, according to the indictment, was “to unlawfully change the outcome” of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor.Ms. Willis, a veteran prosecutor, has said she appreciates the way that RICO indictments allow for the telling of big, broad, easily digestible stories. Both the YSL and Trump indictments paint pictures of multifaceted “organizations,” showing how the defendants are connected and what they are accused of, which are described across dozens of pages as “acts in furtherance of the conspiracy.”These acts include both discernible criminal activity — like murder and aggravated assault in the YSL case and “false statements and writings” and “conspiracy to defraud the state” in the Trump case. But they also include noncriminal “overt acts” meant to further the goal of the conspiracy.Ms. Willis’s office has proposed that the Trump trial begin in March.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesIn the YSL indictment, the “overt acts” include Mr. Williams’s performing rap songs with violent lyrics — a legal strategy that has set off a heated debate about free speech and whether hip-hop, a quintessentially Black art form, is the target of racist scapegoating. Last year, Mr. Williams’s defense team filed a motion seeking to exclude the lyrics from the case, but the judge has yet to rule on it.Chris Timmons, a trial lawyer and former Georgia prosecutor, said he expected a similar free speech fight to erupt, at least in court, over Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts. Mentions of tweets he posted in the months after the 2020 election pepper the 98-page indictment as it describes efforts in Washington to set up bogus pro-Trump electors in Georgia and other states, to cajole legislators in those states to accept them, and to pressure Mike Pence, then the vice president, to throw a wrench in the final Electoral College vote.Some of the tweets in the indictment might seem rather bland in a different context. “Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!” Mr. Trump tweeted on Dec. 3, 2020 — a month after Election Day — referring to a far-right TV network’s airing of a state legislative hearing in which his supporters made a number of untrue allegations about election fraud.In other instances, Mr. Trump tweeted outright lies about election fraud. “People in Georgia got caught cold bringing in massive numbers of ballots and putting them in ‘voting’ machines,” he posted in December 2020.Mr. Timmons said he expected Mr. Trump’s lawyers to try to throw out his Twitter posts, as well as a recording of a call that the former president made to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, on free speech grounds.“They’re going to try to suppress the recording of the phone call, and probably try to suppress any tweets that were sent, and any text messages, anything along those lines, as violative of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” he said.In another parallel with the YSL case, the Trump case is almost certain to see multiple pretrial motions from a bumper crop of defense lawyers. One defendant, Mr. Meadows, has already filed a motion to move the case to federal court.Both Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who is among the defendants, may also file for removal, which would broaden the jury pool beyond liberal Fulton County into more Trump-friendly areas.Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer representing John Eastman, a defendant in the Trump case charged with helping to plan the bogus elector scheme, said this week that he expected a number of defendants to try to sever their cases.“Bringing in that many defendants and that many counts is an unmanageable criminal case,” he said, referring to the fact that each defendant is charged with racketeering and at least one of 40 other criminal charges.Mr. Silverglate, who said his client was innocent, added, “This is a case that wouldn’t reach trial in two years.”Ms. Willis’s office has proposed that the Trump trial begin in March, but the chances of that happening seem vanishingly slim. Mr. Meadows’s removal effort alone is likely to trigger a federal appeal, a process that could take months to resolve.While dragging out a case can hurt the prosecution, as witnesses forget or even die, the mere prospect of a multiyear legal ordeal can help convince some defendants to take a plea, as probably happened in the YSL case.Mr. Timmons, who tried numerous RICO cases, said that prosecutors often hoped to secure pleas from the lower-level players and work up toward the defendant at the top of the list, who is often the most prominent or powerful among them.“Your goal is to roll that up like a carpet, working at the bottom and working your way to the top,” he said.The Trump case may prove different from the YSL case in that rappers’ careers might survive a guilty plea (unless they are deemed snitches), while lawyers convicted of felonies lose their licenses — and there are numerous lawyers on the Trump indictment. Those lawyers may choose to hang on and fight an epic legal battle with Ms. Willis, a formidable prosecutor who has been trying RICO cases for years.Mr. Trump is running for re-election while facing indictments in Florida, New York and Washington, D.C., as well as in Georgia. If he is concerned about how his legal troubles could affect his popularity, he might find hope in the fact that Mr. Williams released his latest album while in custody, and saw it debut at the top of a Billboard chart this summer. More