For the fourth time this year, former President Donald Trump has been charged with a crime. On Thursday, he will turn himself in to be arrested on more than a dozen offenses related to his attempts to rig Georgia’s 2020 election results.
Trump is scheduled to travel from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to Atlanta in order to surrender to the infamous Fulton County jail.
Because the former president and his attorneys arranged his consent bail arrangement before Thursday, Trump’s processing through the jail will probably be finished swiftly, similar to those of his 18 co-defendants who have already turned themselves in at the institution. Trump consented to a $200,000 bond as well as additional terms for his release, such as refraining from slandering his co-defendants and case witnesses on social media.
Prior to pleading guilty, Trump switched his senior Georgia attorney, Drew Findling, with Atlanta-based Steven Sadow, who bills himself as a “special counsel for white collar and high-profile defense.” Findling’s performance was not the issue, according to a Trump insider, who also claimed that Sadow was the “best criminal defense lawyer in Georgia.”
With his surrender in Georgia, Trump has now handed himself in to local or federal authorities four times this year after being charged with a crime, an occurrence that had never occurred in the US prior to 2023.
The ex-president was arrested in New York in April on state charges connected to a hush money conspiracy. He turned himself in in June to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the improper handling of secret papers at a federal courthouse in Miami. Trump was also arrested earlier this month in Washington, DC, and charged by Smith as part of his inquiry into attempts to rig the 2020 election.
All of those cases might be resolved next year, around the time when Trump announces his candidacy. The trial date for the election subversion case against Trump and 18 of his friends was requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Thursday. The case is scheduled to go to trial on October 23, 2023.
The first of Trump’s four criminal trials would begin on that day, albeit it is too soon to judge whether or not that date is probable.
Following a lengthy investigation, Willis filed the extensive racketeering case last week. He has asked that Trump and the other 18 defendants be arraigned the following month. Defendants have till Friday at noon to turn themselves in.
Former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, who were arrested on Wednesday, and John Eastman, another ex-Trump lawyer, who handed himself in on Tuesday, are among the defendants who have so far surrendered.
Raffensperger was summoned to a hearing on Monday
A federal court on Wednesday denied two of the defendants’ requests to have their impending arrests halted, including former White House top of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department employee Jeffrey Clark.
Monday is the hearing date for Meadows’ request to transfer the criminal case against him from Fulton County to federal court. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state for Georgia, and Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state during the 2020 election, were both subpoenaed on Thursday to appear by the Fulton County district attorney’s office.
The subpoena is one of many signs that Fulton County prosecutors intend to make a court hearing on Monday morning on Meadows’ attempts to have the district attorney’s charges against her dismissed focus on Trump’s call to Raffensperger in January 2021, in which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” the votes that would turn around his electoral loss in the state.
Due in part to his involvement in the conversation, Meadows, who was on it, is now charged in the Georgia election subversion case.
Meadows and the Fulton County prosecutors came to a $100,000 bond agreement on Thursday.
After the 2020 election, Trump falsely declared himself the winner before attempting to have Georgia and other states’ results overturned.
He called Raffensperger and other election officials in Georgia repeatedly, urging them to support him. The former president’s team launched baseless lawsuits in an effort to overturn Georgia’s election results and persuade state lawmakers to replace Joe Biden’s valid electoral votes with GOP electors.
Willis charged Trump with 13 crimes in the indictment presented last Monday, including racketeering, conspiracy, and enticing a public officer to break their oath of office.
All 19 defendants in the Georgia case are accused of participating in a large “criminal enterprise” that sought to rig the outcome of the 2020 election in the Peach State, according to the racketeering charge Willis filed against them all.
When that strategy failed, his team attempted to present a slate of fictitious, pro-Trump electors. And on January 6, 2021, while presiding over the Electoral College certification in Congress, Trump put pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to acknowledge those fraudulent GOP electors.