Former President Donald Trump surrendered tonight at the Fulton County Jail to be booked on racketeering charges.
Trump, who arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport just after 7 p.m., was fingerprinted, a mug shot was taken and he was released on a previously agreed-upon bail of $200,000 in less than 25 minutes, according to officials.
On Aug. 14, a Fulton County grand jury returned a 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 of his allies for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis set an Aug. 25 date for all the defendants to voluntarily surrender at the jail on Rice Street in Downtown Atlanta.
All week, a parade of the indicted co-conspirators have been booked at the jail and released on negotiated bonds. So far, John Eastman, Scott Hall, David Shafer, Cathleen Latham, Kenneth Chesebro, Ray Smith, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, and Mark Meadows have all been released on bond.
While the media circus played out in Atlanta, Republican allies in Washington, D.C. are hoping to sideline Willis’ prosecution of Trump.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee said it would begin an inquiry to find out if Willis coordinated with the Department of Justice or the Biden Administration as she conducted her probe.
At the state level, Georgia Sen. Colton Moore called for a special legislative session to remove Willis as the Fulton district attorney, but his petition has little chance of passing since even his GOP colleagues rejected the idea.
Willis originally requested a March 4. 2024 trial date for Trump, which is the day before the Super Tuesday Primary, but then asked the judge on Aug. 24 to set a trial date of Oct. 23 for all 19 defendants.
So far, Judge Scott McAfee has agreed to expedite the trial for Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney accused of trying to send false electors to Congress, to the Oct. 23 date.
Before his arrival in Georgia, Trump replaced his lead attorney Drew Findling with noted Atlanta defense attorney Steve Sadow.
Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff, has filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to move the trial to a federal court in hopes of moving it out of heavily-Democratic Fulton County. A hearing is set for Monday on Meadow’s motion.
Before he boarded his plane back to New Jersey, Trump repeated false claims that the Georgia election was “rigged” and “stolen.”
This story has been updated with DA Fani Willis’ request to move the trial date for all 19 of the indicted defendants to Oct. 23.