Donald Trump to surrender in Atlanta in fourth criminal case brought against ex-president this year
By Devan Cole and Jeremy Herb, CNN
(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump will surrender on Thursday to be booked on more than a dozen charges stemming from his efforts to reverse Georgia’s 2020 election results, the fourth time this year the former president has faced criminal charges.
Trump is expected to travel from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club to Atlanta to turn himself in at the notorious Fulton County jail.
Like several of his 18 co-defendants who have already surrendered at the jail, Trump’s processing through the facility will likely be completed quickly because the former president and his lawyers negotiated his consent bond agreement ahead of Thursday. Trump agreed to a $200,000 bond and other release conditions, including not using social media to target the co-defendants and witnesses in the case.
Ahead of his surrender, Trump replaced his top Georgia lawyer, Drew Findling, with Steven Sadow, an Atlanta-based attorney whose website profile describes him as a “special counsel for white collar and high-profile defense.” A Trump source indicated that this was not about Findling’s performance, while another source who is familiar with Sadow called him the “best criminal defense attorney in Georgia.”
Trump’s surrender in Georgia marks the fourth time this year the former president has turned himself in to local or federal officials after criminal charges were brought against him – episodes that had never been seen in the US before 2023.
In April, the former president was booked in New York on state charges related to a hush money scheme. In June, he surrendered at a Miami federal courthouse to face charges in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the mishandling of classified documents. And earlier this month, Trump was placed under arrest in Washington, DC, and arraigned on charges brought by Smith in his investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the sprawling racketeering case last week following a yearslong investigation, has asked for Trump and the other 18 defendants to be arraigned next month. Defendants have until noon on Friday to surrender.
Among the defendants who have surrendered so far are former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who were booked on Wednesday, and John Eastman, another ex-Trump attorney, who turned himself in on Tuesday.
Raffensperger subpoenaed in Monday hearing
Two of the defendants, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, had their bids to block their pending arrests rejected by a federal court on Wednesday.
Meadows has a hearing Monday on his attempt to move the Fulton County prosecution against him to federal court. On Thursday, the Fulton County district attorney’s office subpoenaed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Frances Watson, who served as chief investigator for the secretary of state during the 2020 election, to testify.
Trump falsely claimed victory after the 2020 election, and then tried to overturn the results in Georgia and other states.
In a series of phone calls, he pressured Georgia election officials to help his efforts, including Raffensperger. The former president’s campaign filed meritless lawsuits that tried to nullify the results in Georgia and tried to convince state legislators there to toss Joe Biden’s legitimate electoral votes and replace them with GOP electors.
In the indictment handed up last week, Willis charged Trump with 13 counts, including racketeering, conspiracy charges and soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office.
The racketeering charge in the Georgia case, which Willis brought against all 19 defendants, accuses them of being part of a broad “criminal enterprise” that attempted to overturn the 2020 election result in the Peach State.
When that plan didn’t work, his campaign tried to put forward a slate of fake, pro-Trump electors. And Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to recognize those illegitimate GOP electors while presiding over the Electoral College certification in Congress on January 6, 2021.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
The-CNN-Wire
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