Former Trump lawyer John Eastman surrenders to Georgia authorities
John Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Donald Trump charged with helping the former president’s fake elector scheme, said he will surrender to Fulton County prosecutors today.
In a statement, Eastman said:
I am here today to surrender to an indictment that should never have been brought. It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. As troubling, it targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempted here by “formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.” – An opportunity never afforded them in the Fulton County Superior Court.
Each Defendant in this indictment, no less than any other American citizen, is entitled to rely upon the advice of counsel and the benefit of past legal precedent in challenging what former Vice President Pence described as, “serious allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law” in the 2020 election. The attempt to criminalize our rights to such redress with this indictment will have – and is already having – profound consequences for our system of justice.
My legal team and I will vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named, for which my knowledge of the relevant facts, law, and constitutional provisions may prove helpful. I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.
Key events
As the second-place candidate in the Republican primary race, Florida governor Ron DeSantis will likely withstand the bulk of attacks on Wednesday night’s GOP debate stage as he hopes to re-establish himself as the main contender to Trump and give his campaign a much-needed boost.
The challenge facing DeSantis is how to convince Republican primary voters to pick him without attacking Donald Trump, who is the clear frontrunner in national and early state polls, according to a Politico report.
Nick Iarossi, a Florida-based lobbyist who is close to the DeSantis campaign but not advising him on debate preparations, told the news site that the goal is to “consolidate the anti-Trump Republican support”.
It’s still clearly a two-man race, and that’s why Trump keeps attacking DeSantis, but on Wednesday night he has to demonstrate to everybody that he’s clearly the guy to take on Trump.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will stand center stage at Wednesday night’s first GOP presidential nomination debate, according to a lineup released by the Republican national commitee.
Standing alongside DeSantis and Ramaswamy at the Milwaukee stage will be former vice president Mike Pence and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Fox News reported.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and South Carolina senator Tim Scott will stand in the number five and six positions.
Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum will stand on the wings of the debate stage.
Hugo Lowell
Breaches of the Coffee county voting machines appear to have happened at least two additional times. On 18 January 2021, they were accessed on a second occasion when elections supervisor, Misty Hampton arrived with Doug Logan, the CEO of elections security firm CyberNinjas, and a retired federal employee named Jeffrey Lenberg.
The pair spent at least four hours that afternoon inside the elections office, and then returned the following day for another nine hours. Lenberg then again gained access to the elections office every day for four days starting on 25 January 2021.
What Lenberg did inside remains uncertain. But in a subsequent podcast interview, Lenberg said he and Logan went to Coffee county after hearing about the Senate runoffs incident because they wanted to see if they could replicate the error but “didn’t touch” the machines themselves.
Hugo Lowell
The day after the Capitol attack in Washington, on 7 January 2021, surveillance video picked up Eric Chaney, a member of the Coffee county elections board, arriving at the county’s elections office around 11am. The Coffee county GOP chair, Cathy Latham, also arrived at the office around an hour later.
The tapes then show Latham greeting data experts from SullivanStrickler, a firm that specializes in “imaging”, or making exact copies, of electronic devices, and Scott Hall, a bail bond business owner with ties to the local Republican party hunting for evidence of election fraud.
What happened inside the elections office is only partially captured on surveillance video, but records show the SullivanStrickler team imaged almost every component of the election systems, including ballot scanners, the server used to count votes, thumb drives and flash memory cards.
The company believed it had authorization to collect the data, SullivanStrickler’s director of data risk Dean Felicetti later said in a deposition, and suggested that Hampton and Latham had given their approval.
Most of the imaging work apparently took place off camera, though tapes from the lobby of the Coffee county elections office show Latham, the elections supervisor, Misty Hampton, and Chaney with the SullivanStrickler experts as they bend over to look at computer screens and walk around elections equipment.
Lawyers for Latham and Hampton did not respond to requests for comment. But Latham’s previous lawyer has told the Washington Post that she did not authorize the copying and had “not acted improperly or illegally”. Hall and Chaney also did not respond to requests for comment.
The next day, according to text messages, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell – who helped organize the clandestine operation and paid for it through her non-profit – was informed that SullivanStrickler would post the data it had gathered on to a password-protected site from where it could be downloaded.
Larry Elder to sue RNC after being excluded from first Republican debate
Larry Elder, the rightwing radio host who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, said he plans to sue the Republican national committee (RNC) to halt the party’s first presidential primary debate on Wednesday, after he was excluded from participating.
The RNC announced that eight candidates for tomorrow’s primary debate in Milwaukee, but that three candidates had fallen short: Miami mayor Francis S Suarez, businessman Perry Johnson, and Elder. All three had claimed to have met the donor and polling threshold.
In a statement, Elder said:
I said from the beginning that it appeared the rules of the game were rigged, little did we know just how rigged it is. For some reason, the establishment leaders at the RNC are afraid of having my voice on the debate stage. Just as I had to fight to successfully be on the ballot in the California recall election, I will fight to be on that debate stage because I fully met all of the requirements to do so.
I intend to sue the RNC to halt Wednesday’s presidential debate.
I said from the beginning that it appeared the rules of the game were rigged, little did we know just how rigged it is. For some reason, the establishment leaders at the RNC are afraid of having my voice on the… pic.twitter.com/PX5fnD1Rkn
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) August 22, 2023
John Eastman, who has surrendered to authorities in Georgia, was charged with orchestrating the so-called fake electors scheme designed to keep Donald Trump in office after his election loss.
A central part of Trump’s strategy to reverse his defeat, the fake electors scheme was called that because Republican electors in seven key battleground states signed certificates falsely declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified” to affirm Trump won the 2020 election.
Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University in California, drafted legal memos suggesting then vice-president Mike Pence could refuse to accept electoral votes from several swing states when Congress convened to certify the 2020 vote count. Pence rebuffed his arguments, saying he did not have legal authority.
Eastman was also referenced – but not explicitly named – as an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election subversion case against Trump.
Former Trump lawyer John Eastman surrenders to Georgia authorities
John Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Donald Trump charged with helping the former president’s fake elector scheme, said he will surrender to Fulton County prosecutors today.
In a statement, Eastman said:
I am here today to surrender to an indictment that should never have been brought. It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. As troubling, it targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempted here by “formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.” – An opportunity never afforded them in the Fulton County Superior Court.
Each Defendant in this indictment, no less than any other American citizen, is entitled to rely upon the advice of counsel and the benefit of past legal precedent in challenging what former Vice President Pence described as, “serious allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law” in the 2020 election. The attempt to criminalize our rights to such redress with this indictment will have – and is already having – profound consequences for our system of justice.
My legal team and I will vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named, for which my knowledge of the relevant facts, law, and constitutional provisions may prove helpful. I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.
Hugo Lowell
The Fulton county district attorney has advised several of Donald Trump’s co-defendants that they should surrender at the jail around 3am ET if they want a quick turnaround on their booking because it could take hours during the day, per people familiar.
Expect some surrenders in early hours.
Hugo Lowell
The story about how a group of Donald Trump allies gained unauthorized access to voting machines – informed by deposition transcripts, surveillance tapes and other records – can be traced back to 2020, when the top elections supervisor for Coffee county came across the “adjudication” system for mail ballots within the machines.
In Georgia, mail ballots are marked by hand. If a ballot cannot be read by the machine, because of stray marks or other errors, it goes through an adjudication process whereby a bipartisan panel reviews the ballot and agrees on the voter’s intention before telling the machine how to count it.
The adjudication process became a point of controversy in local Republican party circles after the elections supervisor, Misty Hampton, said in a viral November 2020 video that the person entering the information could theoretically tell it to falsely count a ballot intended for one candidate for another.
Swapping a vote through the adjudication process would be straightforwardly illegal, and there is no evidence that such conduct took place during the 2020 presidential election. If it had, it would have been detected during the subsequent statewide hand count, experts have said.
On 5 January 2021, Georgia held runoff elections for the state’s two US Senate seats. That day, amid a fraught atmosphere, the Coffee county GOP chair, Cathy Latham, was the Republican member on the bipartisan adjudication panel.
As Latham later recounted in depositions in a long-running lawsuit brought by the Coalition for Good Governance, the ballot scanner in Coffee county repeatedly jammed as it tried to read mail-in ballots. And in Latham’s retelling, it appeared to jam more often for ballots marked for Republican candidates.
When Latham complained, the on-site Dominion Voting System technician advised her to wipe the ballot scanner with a cloth. Latham said in her statement that the wiping did not work, and it was only after the technician held his phone near the scanner that the problems were resolved.
According to Latham’s account, the suspicion was that the technician had downloaded something to the ballot scanner through his phone.
There remains no such evidence to date and the Georgia secretary of state’s office has affirmed the scanners have no wireless capability. But that bizarre episode appears to have been the trigger for a number of Trump allies to see if someone could have manipulated the election.
Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman who was charged in connection with the Coffee county election data breach, has been booked into the Fulton county jail, according to jail records.
Prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia have taken a special interest in the breach of voting machines in Coffee county by Trump allies because of the brazen nature of the operation and the possibility that Trump was aware that his allies intended to covertly gain access to the machines.
In a series of particularly notable incidents, forensics experts hired by Trump allies copied data from virtually every part of the voting system, which is used statewide in Georgia, before uploading them to a password-protected website that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers.
John Eastman, a former adviser to Donald Trump who was charged for his alleged role in helping the former president try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, will surrender to authorities at Fulton county on Wednesday, according to a filing.
Eastman, who is among Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia case, faces nine counts, including one for violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as Rico.
He has also been facing discipline proceedings in the State Bar of California, in which he could lose his license to practice law in the state. CNN reported that a California judge said Monday night that Eastman would not be before her on Tuesday and Wednesday because of his forthcoming surrender in Fulton county.
Judge Yvette Roland wrote in a court order:
Based on the recent email exchanges between and with the parties, the court is willing to make certain changes in this week’s trial schedule in order to accommodate Dr. Eastman’s surrender in Fulton County, Georgia, which the court understands will take place on Wednesday, August 23rd.
In a “consent bond order” listed on the Fulton county court website on Monday, Eastman and prosecutors agreed to a $100,000 bond on the charges he is facing, which include racketeering, criminal conspiracy and filing false documents.
Under the terms of the 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”.
Bail bondsman Scott Hall is the first co-defendant of Donald Trump to surrender to authorities in Georgia to face charges over their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.
Hall was given an inmate identification number on Tuesday and is currently detained, according to court records.
Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman who surrendered to the Fulton county jail, had reached a bond agreement with Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis after he was charged with racketeering and six criminal conspiracy counts relating to a scheme to access voting machines and data in rural Coffee county.
In a “consent bond order” listed on the Fulton county court website on Monday, Hall agreed to a $10,000 bond, that he will “report to pre-trial supervision every 30 days” and that is barred from communicating with the other 18 defendants in the case.
Hall, Cathy Latham and Misty Hampton “aided, abetted, and encouraged” employees from the data solutions firm SullivanStrickler to access voting equipment inside the Coffee county board of elections registration office, according to the indictment handed down by Willis.
First of Trump’s co-defendants turns himself in to Fulton county jail
Scott Hall, one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case, has turned himself in to the Fulton county jail, according to the jail’s online database.
A Georgia bail bondsman and Trump supporter, Hall is charged with illegally seeking access to voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia, to search for evidence they were rigged.
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump’s decision to spurn the debate on Fox News in favor of an online interview with Tucker Carlson marks a new level of hostility with the network.
The sit-down with Carlson would be particularly bruising for Fox given Carlson is still on contract and being paid by the network, despite having his show taken off the air after the network settled, for $787m, a defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over 2020 election denial claims.
Fox News executives and hosts have reportedly been begging Trump to take part in the debate. Last month, the Fox News president, Jay Wallace, and CEO, Suzanne Scott, went to Bedminster to convince Trump to attend, and came away thinking he could still participate.
But Trump has been openly attacking Fox News since the launch of his presidential campaign, in part because of its positive coverage of his 2024 rival and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and has privately lashed out at the Fox Corporation chairman, Rupert Murdoch.
Donald Trump says he will surrender to Fulton county authorities on Thursday
Martin Pengelly
Donald Trump says he will surrender to authorities in Georgia on Thursday to face charges in the case accusing him of illegally scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his social media network on Monday night, hours after court papers said his bond was set at $200,000.
The Fulton county sheriff’s office said in a news release on Monday afternoon that when Trump surrenders there will be a “hard lockdown” of the area surrounding the main county jail.
Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has set a deadline of noon on Friday for Trump and his 18 co-defendants to turn themselves in to be booked. The prosecutor has proposed that arraignments for the defendants follow during the week of 5 September. She has said she wants to try the defendants collectively, and bring the case to trial in March of next year, which would put it in the heat of the presidential nominating season.
In Fulton county, when defendants are not in custody, their lawyers and the district attorney’s office will often work out a bond amount before arraignment and the judge will sign off on it. The defendants will generally be booked at the Fulton county jail. During the booking process, they are typically photographed and fingerprinted and then they provide certain personal information. Since Trump’s bond has already been set, he will be released from custody once the booking process is complete.
Eight candidates qualify for first Republican primary debate
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Eight Republicans have officially qualified for the party’s first 2024 presidential primary debate, the Republican national committee announced on Monday night.
The eight candidates scheduled to appear on the debate stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night are: Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, the former vice-president Mike Pence, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, North Dakota’s governor Doug Burgum, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, business entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and South Carolina senator Tim Scott.
Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner in national and early state polls, will not be there. Instead, the former president sat down for an interview with the former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, that is expected to be used as counter programming in an attempt to upstage the opening event in the party’s nominating contest.
Without Trump, much of the attention is expected to fall on his closest rival Ron DeSantis, who has polled consistently in second place but has remained stagnant while Trump’s lead has grown. The Florida governor will likely withstand the bulk of attacks on the debate stage as he hopes to re-establish himself as the main contender to Trump and give his campaign a much-needed boost.
Meanwhile, Trump said he will surrender to authorities in Georgia on Thursday to face charges in the case accusing him of illegally scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss. “Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his social media network on Monday night, hours after court papers said his bond was set at $200,000.
In a court document posted online on Monday, bond amounts for the 13 charges against the former president ranged from $10,000, for counts including criminal conspiracy and filing false documents, to $80,000, for a violation of the Georgia Rico Act, often used against organised crime.
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has set a deadline of noon on Friday for Trump and his 18 co-defendants to turn themselves in to be booked, and proposed that arraignments for the defendants follow during the week of 5 September. Willis has said she wants to try the defendants collectively, and bring the case to trial in March of next year, which would put it in the heat of the presidential nominating season.