Former President Donald J. Trump surrendered on the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Thursday and was booked on 13 felony fees for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
It was a unprecedented scene: a former U.S. president who flew on his personal jet to Atlanta and surrendered at a jail compound surrounded by concertina wire and indicators that directed guests to the “prisoner intake” space.
As Mr. Trump’s motorcade of black S.U.V.s drove to the jail via cleared streets, preceded by greater than a dozen police bikes — a visit captured by news helicopters and broadcast reside on nationwide tv — two worlds collided in methods by no means earlier than seen in American political historical past. The nation’s former commander in chief walked right into a infamous jail, one which has been cited in rap lyrics and is the topic of a Department of Justice investigation into unsanitary and unsafe situations, together with allegations that an “incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth.”
The case is the fourth introduced towards Mr. Trump this yr, however Thursday was the primary time that he was booked at a jail.
Mr. Trump spent about 20 minutes there, submitting to a number of the routines of legal defendant consumption. He was fingerprinted and had his mug shot taken. He was assigned an identification quantity, P01135809. But the method was quicker than for many defendants; minutes after he entered the jail, Mr. Trump’s report appeared in Fulton County’s reserving system, which listed him as having “blond or strawberry” hair, a peak of 6 toes 3 inches and a weight of 215 kilos — 24 kilos lower than the White House physician reported Mr. Trump weighing in 2018.
His type was crammed out prematurely by aides, in keeping with somebody accustomed to the preparations, not by officers on the jail.
Outside, supporters and detractors of Mr. Trump had gathered all day within the swampy Atlanta warmth. The news media was saved at bay. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office barred reporters from accessing the car parking zone in entrance of the jail’s essential entrance, a break with custom.
Before leaving Atlanta on his airplane, Mr. Trump was defiant. The Georgia case, he stated, was a “travesty of justice.”
“We have every right to challenge an election we think is dishonest,” he stated.
The former president’s bond within the case was set at $200,000 on Monday, and he used a business bondsman, Charles Shaw of Foster Bail Bonds, to publish his bond in alternate for $20,000, the bondsman confirmed.
In a final minute shake-up of his authorized group earlier than he surrendered on Thursday, Mr. Trump employed Steven H. Sadow, a veteran legal protection lawyer in Atlanta whose purchasers have included distinguished rappers. In a submitting to the court docket, Mr. Sadow stated he was now “lead counsel of record for Donald John Trump.”
Lawyers on each side of the case filed a flurry of authorized motions on Thursday. After one of many 19 defendants, the lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, demanded a speedy trial, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district lawyer who’s prosecuting the case, requested a decide to set a trial date of Oct. 23, months sooner than she had initially sought.
Mr. Trump objected to that timing, a sign that he desires to maneuver extra slowly. The decide accepted the October trial date, however just for Mr. Chesebro. The final date of any trial, nonetheless, won’t be clear till efforts by a number of the defendants to maneuver the case to federal court docket are resolved.
Mr. Trump is on the high of the record of 19 defendants within the indictment launched final week. Prosecutors used a state model of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, that they hope will permit them to indicate the methods during which Mr. Trump and several other of his allies labored collectively towards the frequent purpose of searching for to overturn the outcomes of the election in Georgia.
The RICO statute is commonly used towards the mafia and avenue gangs. In the Georgia indictment, Mr. Trump and his co-defendants are accused of impersonating a public officer, forgery, submitting false paperwork, influencing witnesses, conspiracy to defraud the state and “acts involving theft,” amongst different crimes.
The indictment lays out the broadest set of accusations leveled towards the previous president to this point. Georgia’s racketeering legislation can carry legal penalties of between 5 and 20 years in jail.
It is the second case centered on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith, the particular counsel, introduced the opposite, a federal case, earlier in August.
Ms. Willis started her investigation after a recording of Mr. Trump was launched during which he advised Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, that he wished to “find” 11,780 votes, yet one more than he wanted to win the state and its Electoral College votes. Mr. Trump later described the decision to Mr. Raffensperger as “absolutely perfect.”
His defiance within the face of the 4 instances lodged towards him has supplied political oxygen for his marketing campaign and a big fund-raising windfall.
After his first indictment in March, which charged him in a hush-money scheme to cowl up a possible intercourse scandal, Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign reported elevating $15 million within the two weeks that adopted.
In June, an indictment in Miami that centered on labeled paperwork was adopted by $7 million in fund-raising, Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign reported.
Hours earlier than he was set to be booked on Thursday, Mr. Trump despatched out a fund-raising electronic mail. “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 4 latest polls, a majority of respondents stated the legal fees towards Mr. Trump had been warranted. But on the similar time, Mr. Trump’s standing amongst Republican voters is powerful, and he’s holding onto a substantial lead towards his Republican major rivals.
He declined to participate within the first major debate of the 2024 marketing campaign on Wednesday, which featured eight of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination. Bret Baier, one of many debate’s moderators on Fox News, quipped that Mr. Trump was the “elephant not in the room.”
Mr. Trump can be neck and neck towards President Biden in latest polls. A Quinnipiac University ballot this month confirmed him trailing Mr. Biden by a single proportion level, 47 % to 46 %, in a hypothetical rematch. Mr. Biden’s benefit was 5 proportion factors in July.
Outside the Fulton County jail, supporters of Mr. Trump got here early within the day, hoping for a glimpse of the previous president. Rick Hearn, 44, an Atlanta accountant, introduced with him a poster that confirmed a picture of Mr. Trump subsequent to one in all Nelson Mandela, with the label “political prisoners.”
“I feel like I needed to be a part of this,” Mr. Hearn stated,
“Those in charge,” he added, have to know that they can’t “take away our rights and get away with it.”
Alan Feuer, Neil Vigdor, Ruth Igielnik, Maggie Haberman, Sean Keenan and Anna Betts contributed reporting.
Source: www.nytimes.com