Former President Donald Trump was arrested and quickly released from the Fulton County Jail on Thursday night. The trip from New Jersey to Atlanta was televised on primetime television and was the culmination of a dramatic day outside the detention center.
Trump’s huge motorcade arrived at the prison around 7:30 p.m. After about 20 minutes, he was released on $200,000 bail. agreement The law prohibits him from threatening or intimidating anyone involved in the case – even on social media, where the former president is very busy.
He is accused of violating Georgia’s RICO law, as well as a host of other charges related to efforts to overturn the election in a state he lost by nearly 12,000 votes.
The Fulton County indictment is Trump’s fourth this year and the first in which his mugshot was taken. He faces 13 charges in Georgia, where he is accused of working with his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Trump dismissed the allegations as politically motivated and claimed he genuinely believed the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen. The former president, who is considered the front-runner in the Republican race to challenge President Joe Biden next year, called the charges a form of “election interference.”
“We did nothing wrong at all, and we have every right – every single right – to challenge an election that we believe was dishonest, and we believe it was very dishonest,” Trump said Thursday in a brief address to some reporters outside the prison.
But he is accused of taking his challenge too far. The Fulton County indictment handed over by a grand jury claimed last week that Trump and 18 others were part of a “criminal organization” that attempted to illegally overturn the 2020 election results through a false election conspiracy.
As of Friday morning, 17 of the 19 defendants had been arraigned, including Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who turned himself in on Thursday morning. Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani turned himself in on Wednesday.
Five defendants quietly surrendered in the hours after Trump’s surrender. Trump campaign staffer Michael Roman, former deputy attorney general Jeffrey Clark, state Sen. Shawn Still, Trump campaign local attorney Robert Cheeley and former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton were all subpoenas, according to the county jail’s website.
The remaining two, Stephen Cliffgard Lee and Trevian Kutti, have until Friday noon to surrender.
Read the 98-page indictment Here.
Georgia’s election results have been certified three times, including a recount conducted by hand. A state-led investigation and several lawsuits also failed to uncover the widespread fraud that Trump has long falsely claimed thwarted his bid for a second term. Trump’s own attorney general told the former president in 2020 that he lost the election in Georgia and there was no evidence of fraud.
On Thursday, numerous legal motions were also filed concerning the jurisdiction of some of the defendants and the course of the trial.
A judge in Georgia has scheduled a trial for Kenneth Chesebro, who served as a lawyer for the Trump campaign, for Oct. 23. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked Judge Scott McAfee on Thursday to set the trial for all 19 defendants for that date. Willis proposed an unexpectedly quick solution to respond to Chesebro’s demand for a speedy trial.
McAfee decided on Thursday that the trial date only apply to Chesebro.
Chesebro is accused of violating Georgia’s RICO law and other crimes to appoint false electors. In Georgia, he is accused of providing the documents that Republican electors signed stating that they had correctly cast the state’s 16 electoral votes for Trump.
“I didn’t see any real crime”
Outside the jail, Trump’s fans outnumbered his critics, as his most ardent supporters traveled from across the country to gather along Rice Street and show their support. A throng of reporters from around the world gathered outside the county jail to watch the historic moment.
Many of Trump’s fans said the former president’s growing criminal record – in addition to two articles of impeachment – only made them more skeptical of allegations of his wrongdoing.
“Organized crime is about stealing money and stuff like that. It doesn’t make sense,” said Jerry Ramsey, a resident of western Cobb County, citing legal experts who have appeared on Fox News. “If you show me a real crime was committed, I might change my mind. But I didn’t see a real crime.”
Ramsey argues that Trump did what anyone else would have done if they couldn’t keep up with the outcome of an election.
“Here in Georgia, he just called and asked, ‘Could you all recount the votes?’ If I lost an election, I would do the same thing,” he said.
Ray Worth, who lives in Carroll County, said he took to the streets Thursday to “support freedom, our ability to speak freely.” He called Trump “a champion of free speech.”
Worth said he doesn’t expect evidence to convince him that Trump violated the law. He argues that Trump was merely challenging the election results.
“You are allowed to do that. This is a free country. That’s called freedom. You are allowed to say what you believe to be true. I believe what I feel is true and he believes it too,” Worth said.
Trump’s brief prison visit capped off a long, sweltering August day filled with circus-like energy. Some people wore costumes, including several “Uncle Sams” and some rats and a wolf, representing the anti-Trump faction.
Several hours before former President Trump’s expected arrival, protesters traded competing chants and verbal taunts. The chants, some of which were vulgar, included calls to lock up Biden and Trump.
Late in the afternoon, self-proclaimed rapper Forgiato Blow, the mayor of Magaville, and others joined members of the Black Trump group for an impromptu jam session that featured songs like Blow’s “Trump Saved the USA.”
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia appeared in jail as Trump’s plane landed at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, fresh from her trip to Wisconsin to serve as Trump’s surrogate. the first Republican presidential debate that he has offended.
Greene replaced her social media profile with a imitation mugshot in solidarity, she told the conservative Right Side Broadcasting Network. “I am ashamed of Georgia,” Greene said in the affable interview.
But it wasn’t just Trump supporters in front of the county jail on Rice Street.
One anti-Trump group outside the prison on Thursday was Republicans Against Trump, also known as RAT. Its members wore black-and-white striped prison jumpsuits and full rat costumes. Their leader, Domenic Santana, said they wanted Trump to be held accountable for his attempt to disrupt the election process in Georgia.
Meanwhile, Nadine Seiler flew in from Maryland this week to witness Trump’s historic arrest.
One of the few anti-Trump protesters who showed up on Thursday engaged in heated verbal altercations with Trump supporters as she carried a banner reading “Finally: Trump arrested.”
“He tried to steal the votes of black and brown people,” Seiler said. “That’s why he’s here, because he tried to disenfranchise black and brown voters.”
Georgia Recorder Editor John McCosh contributed to this report.
