Donald Trump surrendered at the Fulton county jail on Thursday evening on racketeering and conspiracy charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the State of Georgia, where he was processed as any criminal defendant and had his mugshot taken.
The former president’s brief booking marks yet another stunning moment in which the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 race was again under arrest in a major criminal case.
The booking came during the prime-time viewing hours for the cable news networks, a time slot that Trump was said to have insisted his lawyers negotiated with prosecutors in an apparent effort to discredit the charges and distract from the indignity of the surrender.
But Trump turned himself over to authorities without the special privileges afforded to him in his other criminal cases.
In addition to the mugshot that he had desperately sought to avoid – the first ever taken of a former US president – Trump had his fingerprints taken and had his weight recorded as 215lb, according to online records.
Trump faced his fourth indictment since leaving office when he was charged in a 41-count indictment by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, last week, that described Trump and 18 allies as having engaged in a criminal enterprise to reverse his 2020 election defeat.
In a clear sign of Willis’ belief that her team was ready to go to trial immediately, she asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October after one of the co-defendants, Trump’s former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.
Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date within hours, underscoring Trump’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election – and indicating the diverging interests of the people ensnared in the indictment.
The bond for Trump was agreed at $200,000, the highest amount of any of his co-defendants, including his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who turned himself in for booking a day earlier after his bond was set at $150,000 after being charged with principally the same counts.
Trump used a local commercial bondsman, Charles Shaw of Foster Bail Bonds, to post the $200,000 bond. He was released after about 20 minutes in jail on conditions that include stringent witness intimidation restrictions that have not been put in place for his co-defendants, court filings show, until he is due back in state court for arraignment.
