Former President Donald J. Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Thursday and was booked on 13 felony charges for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
It was an extraordinary scene: a former US President who flew on his own jet to Atlanta and surrendered at a jail compound surrounded by concertina wire and signs that directed visitors to the “prisoner intake” area.
As Trump’s motorcade of black SUVs drove to the jail through cleared streets, preceded by more than a dozen police motorcycles — a trip captured by news helicopters and broadcast live on national television — two worlds collided in ways never before seen in American political history.
The nation’s former commander-in-chief walked into a notorious jail, one that has been cited in rap lyrics and is the subject of a department of justice investigation into unsanitary conditions, including allegations that an “incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth”.
The case is the fourth brought against Trump this year, but Thursday was the first time that he was booked in jail.
Trump spent about 20 minutes there, submitting to some of the routines of criminal defendant intake. He was fingerprinted and had his mug shot taken. He was assigned an identification number, P01135809. But the process was faster than for most defendants; minutes after he entered the jail, Trump’s record appeared in Fulton County’s booking system, which listed him as having “blond or strawberry” hair, a height of 6 feet 3 inches and a weight of 97kg — 12kg less than the White House doctor reported Trump weighing in 2018.
His form was filled out in advance by aides, according to someone familiar with the preparations, not by officials at the jail.
Outside, supporters and detractors of Trump had gathered all day in the swampy Atlanta heat. The news media was kept at bay. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office barred reporters from accessing the parking lot in front of the jail’s main entrance, a break with tradition.
Before leaving Atlanta on his plane, Trump was defiant. The Georgia case, he said, was a “travesty of justice”.
“We have every right to challenge an election we think is dishonest,” he said.
The former President’s bond in the case was set at $200,000 on Monday, and he used a commercial bondsman, Charles Shaw of Foster Bail Bonds, to post his bond in exchange for $20,000, the bondsman confirmed.
In a last-minute shake-up of his legal team, before he surrendered on Thursday, Trump hired Steven H. Sadow, a veteran criminal defence lawyer in Atlanta whose clients have included prominent rappers. In a filing to the court, Sadow said he was now “lead counsel of record for Donald John Trump”.
Lawyers on both sides of the case filed a flurry of legal motions on Thursday. After one of the 19 defendants, the lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, demanded a speedy trial, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is prosecuting the case, asked a judge to set a trial date of October 23, months earlier than she had originally sought.
New York Times News Service
