ATLANTA (AP) — The only person who spent time behind bars as a result of the sweeping indictment related to efforts to overturn then-President Donald Trump 's 2020 election loss in Georgia was released from jail Wednesday after he was granted bond a day earlier.
A lawyer for Harrison William Prescott Floyd on Tuesday negotiated a $100,000 bond with the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Floyd was charged along with Trump and 17 others in an indictment that accuses them all of illegally conspiring to subvert the will of Georgia voters who had chosen Democrat Joe Biden over the Republican incumbent in the presidential election.
Lawyers for Trump and the other defendants had all negotiated bonds before their clients surrendered at the Fulton County Jail by the deadline last Friday. Floyd had turned himself in Thursday without first having a bond and, therefore, had to remain in jail. A judge denied him bond during a hearing Friday, saying the issue would be addressed by the judge assigned to the case.
The Fulton County Jail, where Floyd was held and where the others turned themselves in, has long been plagued with problems. Four people held in the main jail have died in the past month and the U.S. Department of Justice has an open civil rights investigation into jail conditions in the county.
Floyd is charged with violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, conspiring to commit false statements and illegally influencing a witness. The charges are rooted in harassment of Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump. Floyd took part in a Jan. 4, 2020, conversation in which Freeman was told she “needed protection” and was pressured to make false statements about election fraud, the indictment says.
In addition to the Georgia charges, federal court records show Floyd, identified as a former U.S. Marine who’s active with the group Black Voices for Trump, was also arrested three months ago in Maryland on a federal warrant that accuses him of aggressively confronting two FBI agents sent to serve him with a grand jury subpoena.
An agent’s affidavit filed in U.S. District Court says Floyd screamed, cursed and jabbed a finger in one FBI agent’s face and twice chest-bumped the agent in a stairwell. It says Floyd backed down only when the second agent opened his suit coat to reveal his holstered gun.
Also on Wednesday, a lawyer who was charged in the indictment objected to a filing by Willis that sought clarification on trial timing.
Prosecutor say Kenneth Chesebro worked on the coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate falsely stating that Trump won the state and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
Chesebro last week filed a demand for a speedy trial while Willis sought to have the trial for all defendants begin Oct. 23. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee set a trial on that date for Chesebro alone.
In a filing Tuesday, Willis asked the judge to clarify whether his intention was to separate Chesebro from the other defendants for trial. She said she continues to believe all 19 defendants should be tried together and, at the very least, any of them who file speedy trial demands should be tried together.
Trump attorney Steve Sadow wrote in a filing Wednesday that the court's order needs no clarification and that the judge used his “discretion proactively and soundly to presumptively sever” those who filed for a speedy trial. Sadow also said Trump intends to file a motion to sever his case from those defendants.
