Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, is believed to be first co-defendant to surrender at local jail before Friday deadline.
One of the co-defendants indicted alongside former US President Donald Trump this month over a campaign to overturn the 2020 United States election results in Georgia has surrendered at a jail in Atlanta.
Scott Hall is believed to be first person charged in the Georgia election meddling case to surrender, according to US media reports.
Prosecutors in the southern US state indicted Trump and 18 co-defendants last week, using a law typically associated with mobsters to accuse the group of plotting to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the 2020 vote.
Hall, a bail bondsman and Republican poll watcher in Georgia’s Fulton County, has been accused of being involved in a voting systems breach that prosecutors say took place in Coffee County, southeast of Atlanta, in early 2021.
Georgia prosecutors have given the co-defendants until Friday to voluntarily surrender to the Fulton County Jail, where authorities will take their photographs, fingerprints and personal information.
Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing in the case, has said he plans to turn himself in on Thursday.
“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED by a Radical Left District Attorney, Fani Willis,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform this week.
Trump’s former lawyer and co-defendant in Georgia, John Eastman, also said he plans to surrender on Tuesday.
“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,” Eastman said in a statement on Tuesday morning.
Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has repeatedly hit out against Georgia officials, accusing them of conducting a “witch hunt” that aims to derail his re-election bid.
The Georgia case marks the second indictment against Trump over 2020 election interference, and the fourth time he has been criminally charged so far this year.
He was indicted on federal election interference charges in early August, as well as on federal charges of mishandling classified documents in June. He also faces a state-level prosecution in New York linked to a hush-money payment made to a porn star.
Trump pleaded not guilty in the first three cases and is expected to do the same in the Georgia indictment, which came after a years-long investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to alter the presidential election results in the state.
The probe was launched in January 2021 after Trump asked Georgia’s top election official to “find 11,780 votes” to turn the election in his favour after his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, had won.
The Georgia indictment accuses Hall, the bail bondsman, of taking part in a conspiracy to illegally access voter data in early January 2021.
CNN reported on Tuesday morning that Hall had signed a bond agreement earlier this week and “should be released after he is processed at the jail”. That bond agreement requires Hall to report to pre-trial supervision every 30 days.
A Georgia judge on Monday also approved a $200,000 bond agreement for Trump, according to court filings.
The agreement set out strict rules for Trump’s behaviour in the lead-up to the trial, barring him from making any “direct or indirect thread” against those involved in the case, among other things.
“The Defendant shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be codefendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice,” the bond order reads.
Sumber: www.aljazeera.com
