Former US President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Windham High School in Windham, New Hampshire, on August 8, 2023.
Joseph Prezioso | Afp | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump said Monday night that he would turn himself in on Thursday in Fulton County, Georgia, after being indicted on sprawling charges stemming from his efforts to hold onto office in the wake of the 2020 election.
“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED by a Radical Left District Attorney, Fani Willis,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who launched the investigation into Trump and his allies, has given the defendants until noon Friday to voluntarily surrender.
Willis last week hit the former president and 18 others with racketeering charges for allegedly scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the case, and gave the defendants until Aug. 25th to surrender voluntarily at the Rice Street Jail.
Three senior law enforcement officials told NBC News that they expected Trump’s surrender to happen late this week. In a news release Monday, the Fulton County sheriff’s office said that when he does turn himself in “there will be a hard lockdown of the area surrounding the Rice Street Jail.”
Trump earlier Monday agreed to a $200,000 bond in the Georgia criminal case charging him with trying to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state.
Under the terms of the “consent bond order” filed in court Monday afternoon, Trump agreed to the bond amount on charges that include racketeering, criminal conspiracy, criminal solicitation, filing false documents and making false statements.
The order was signed off on by Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee. The order, which was signed by Willis and Trump’s attorneys, says that Trump “shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a codefendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.”
It also says the “Defendant shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community; The above shall include, but are not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.”
The filing was filed with the court after members of Trump’s legal team — Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little — were spotted entering the Fulton County Courthouse around 2:10 p.m. ET, walking in the direction of the DA’s office. They declined to comment to reporters on their way in.
Other defendants agreed to bond packages with prosecutors Monday as well. As of late Monday afternoon, Trump’s was the only one signed off on by Willis — the others were signed by her deputy. His was also the only one with terms that included not making threats to the community or on social media.
John Eastman, the lawyer charged with helping to orchestrate Trump’s fake elector scheme, agreed to a $100,000 bond in the case on the charges including racketeering, criminal conspiracy and filing false documents.
McAfee signed off on the agreement Monday morning, the filing shows.
Under the terms of his order, Eastman “shall report to pre-trial supervision every 30 days,” and “shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a codefendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.”
The order also holds that Eastman “shall not communicate in any way, directly or indirectly, about the facts of this case with any person known to him to be a codefendant” or witness “in this case except through his or her counsel” — conditions Trump also agreed to.
Eastman — who’s referenced but not charged as a co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal criminal case against Trump for allegedly trying to subvert the 2020 election results — features prominently and repeatedly in the DA’s indictment.
It alleges that Eastman helped come up with and carry out a scheme to have “alternate” presidential electors cast their votes for Trump in Georgia and several other states that were won by Joe Biden.
Eastman lawyer Harvey Silverglate said in a statement last week that the charges against his client and the 18 other defendants in the case “set out activity that is political, but not criminal” and that Eastman should not have been charged.
Another architect of the electors scheme named as a defendant in the case, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, struck a similar deal, agreeing to a $100,000 bond.
Ray Smith, another Trump lawyer who was allegedly involved in the electors scheme, agreed to a $50,000 bond order, court filings show.
McAfee also signed off on a bond agreement involving another defendant in the case, Scott Hall. Hall is charged with racketeering and six criminal conspiracy counts relating to a scheme to access voting machines and data in rural Coffee County.
His bond was set at $10,000, the court filing shows.