Closing summary
All of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election meddling case have now turned themselves in to authorities in Fulton county, with all but one being released on bond. Five have already asked to have their cases moved to federal court, which will give them more options to defend against allegations they plotted to prevent Joe Biden from getting the swing state’s crucial electoral votes.
Here’s what else happened today:
What does Biden think of Trump’s mug shot? “Handsome guy”, the president quipped.
Harrison Floyd, the lone jailed co-defendant in the Georgia election meddling case, will remain behind bars, a judge ruled.
See the mug shots for five of the defendants who reported to the Fulton county jail today.
Trump’s legal team is resisting Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s proposal to start trials in the Georgia case on 23 October.
Republican president candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, but in fact has ties to prominent figures in both parties.
Crowds will converge in Washington DC on Saturday for a rally to commemorate 60 years since the March on Washington, and the Associated Press reports that on Monday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will mark the anniversary by meeting with organizers of the original gathering, one of the pivotal moments in the civil rights movement.
From the AP’s report:
The Oval Office meeting will be held six decades after President John F. Kennedy and King met at the White House on the morning of the march on Aug. 28, 1963. All of King’s children have been invited to meet with Biden, White House officials said.
Biden also will speak later Monday at a White House reception commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal organization that was established at Kennedy’s request to help advocate for racial justice.
Two White House officials provided details of the Democratic president and vice president’s plans on the condition of anonymity because their schedules have not been officially announced.
The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice demonstrations in U.S. history.
The nonviolent protest attracted as many as 250,000 people to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and provided the momentum for passage by Congress of landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation in the years that followed. King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Black civil right leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies will gather in Washington to mark six decades since the first march. Biden will be flying back to Washington on Saturday after a week of vacation with his family in California’s Lake Tahoe region.
This year’s commemoration comes at a difficult moment in U.S. history following the erosion of voting rights nationwide and the recent striking down of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights by the Supreme Court and amid growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews and LGBTQ people.
An underappreciated actor in American politics is the Federal Reserve, not because it is itself politicized, but because its decisions on interest rates and other monetary policies have great influence on voters’ finances and, by extension, who they support in elections. Thus, it’s worth paying attention to the words of the independent central bank’s chair Jerome Powell, who today signaled they could continue raising interest rates to bring inflation back under control, even though higher borrowing costs could inadvertently cause a recession. The Guardian’s Dominic Rushe breaks it down:
The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, used a closely watched speech on Friday to warn that the fight against inflation in the US is not over.
Speaking at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual gathering of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell said inflation was still too high and that interest rates might have to rise further to tamp it down.
The central bank will “keep at it until the job is done”, said Powell.
The Fed raised rates to a 22-year high in July – its 11th rate rise in 17 months. The annual rate of inflation has declined sharply, down from a 40-year high of 9% last June to close to 3%.
But as the US has rebounded from the pandemic and its aftermath, the economic picture has remained complicated for Powell. Consumer spending and the US jobs market remains robust despite the sharp rise in rates. And while the headline rate of inflation has fallen, prices of food, housing, gas and other essentials remain far higher than they were before the pandemic.
Powell has said that the Fed is aiming to achieve a “soft landing” for the economy, bringing down inflation without causing a sharp spike in job losses. But Powell has also acknowledged that the historically sharp increase in rates may not yet be reflected in the wider economy. “We are navigating by the stars under cloudy skies,” said Powell.
Judge denies bail for Trump co-defendant Harrison Floyd
Harrison Floyd, the sole co-defendant of Donald Trump in the Georgia election subversion case who did not bond out of jail after being arrested earlier this week, will remain behind bars for now, NBC News reports, citing a judge’s decision:
NEW: a judge just denied bond for Harrison Floyd, one of the 19 Fulton County defendants.
— Blayne Alexander (@ReporterBlayne) August 25, 2023
Appearing by video from jail, he said “there’s no way that I’m a flight risk, ma’am. I showed up before the president was here.”
Floyd, who is part of the group Black Voices for Trump, was indicted by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis for allegedly attempting to coerce false testimony from Ruby Freeman, an election worker who became a target of rightwing conspiracies alleging vote rigging in the state.
Biden crosses two-year mark in underwater approval ratings
Listen closely to that video of Joe Biden commenting on Donald Trump’s mug shot and you will hear passersby boo. It’s not an uncommon sentiment.
For now more than two years – since 22 August 2021, to be precise – the Democratic president’s approval rating has been below 50%, according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight. His approval peaked at more than 56% in February 2021, a few weeks into his term, but public opinion took a turn for the worse in August of that year, amid the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, resurgent Covid-19 cases and rising prices.
It has stagnated ever since, even as the rate of inflation moderated, the Afghanistan debacle receded from the headlines and the pandemic became less of a public concern. And while it has recovered from the lows it reached in July 2022 – when key parts of Biden’s legislative agenda seemed close to dying at the hands of congressional gridlock, only to be saved by last-minute dealmaking that resulted in the Inflation Reduction Act – it is far from recovered. Consider, for instance, this Gallup survey released today:
President Joe Biden’s job approval rating is 42%, while ratings of his handling of the situation in Ukraine and race relations are slightly higher, at 47% and 46%, respectively. https://t.co/WHTc2qsXem
— GallupNews (@GallupNews) August 25, 2023
With Biden running for a second term in the White House, his low approval is likely to be a major source of concern for his campaign, and you can expect he is going to spend the next 15 months looking for ways to prove to voters he’s the right man for the job.
Earlier this year, the Guardian’s David Smith tried to figure out why the president’s unpopularity has remained so consistent, even when things appear to be breaking in his direction. You can read what he found out here:
Updated
Joe Biden quips Trump is 'handsome guy' after being asked about mugshot
Joe Biden, on vacation in the Lake Tahoe area, shared his thoughts on Donald Trump’s mug shot released yesterday:
President Biden on Former President Trump's mugshot: "Handsome guy. Wonderful guy." pic.twitter.com/xbsuStN2Z0
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 25, 2023
In case you haven’t seen it:
Updated
Ex-Trump attorney Sidney Powell demands speedy trial in Georgia
Sidney Powell, an attorney briefly retained by Donald Trump’s campaign who took part in his attempt to stop the transfer of power to Joe Biden, has asked for a speedy trial in the Georgia election subversion case, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:
Just in: Sidney Powell, an attorney briefly affiliated with the Trump campaign, files a speedy trial demand in Fulton County pic.twitter.com/nhEk4ZzJfe
— Tamar Hallerman (@TamarHallerman) August 25, 2023
Powell’s filing makes her the second defendant to move to have her case resolved quickly. Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer Trump retained after his 2020 election loss, made a similar demand, and yesterday a judge ruled that his trial will begin on 23 October.
Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has asked that Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants be put on trial by that date, but many are expected to oppose her motion.
Speaking of Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, remember that the event was unusual because Donald Trump, who has an overwhelming lead in most polls, declined to attend.
Instead, he gave an interview to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that was released just as the eight other candidates who qualified for the debate took the stage.
So which event received more eyeballs? According to Mediaite, the Fox News-hosted debate attracted 12.8 million viewers, less than the average viewership for debates held during the 2016 election cycle, but still pretty good once you take into account the fact that many American households no longer subscribe to cable television.
Trump yesterday claimed he carried the evening, with “231,000,000 Views, and still counting” of his interview, which Carlson posted on Twitter, now known as X. But as Mediaite reports, the social media platform’s metrics for measuring viewers of videos has a record of inaccuracy, and all signs point to the debates being the more popular of the two:
All of these grand claims are based on the Twitter “views” metric. But as we’ve reported here previously, Twitter views are all but meaningless.
After Elon Musk took over Twitter, he hid the “video view” metric, which showed how many people watched a video on Twitter. Even the video view metric was pretty flimsy: according to Twitter: if you watch a video for two seconds, with only half the video player in view, you count as one video view.
The tweet view metric — that’s the 253 million number Trump and his allies are touting — is even less valuable. It merely counts how many people viewed the tweet. So if you scrolled past Carlson’s video on Twitter, you counted as one of the 253 million. “Anyone who is logged into Twitter who views a Tweet counts as a view,” Twitter says. If you scrolled past the tweet multiple times, you counted more than once.
…
While X does not publicly disclosed video views, Mashable reported that as of Thursday, 14.8 million people had watched at least 2 seconds of the Trump interview. A small fraction of that 14.8 million will have watched any significant amount of the 46-minute video.
Which means the Trump interview was seen by far fewer people than the Fox News debate.
The Fox debate drew 12.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen. But that metric measures the average concurrent viewers of a program. The total viewership of the debate is many millions more.
The moderators at Wednesday evening’s Republican primary debate kicked off with a question to the candidates about Rich Men North of Richmond, a hit single that has been co-opted by the right as a populist anthem against Democrats. But as the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports, the artist who wrote and sang the song says that’s not what it’s about:
Oliver Anthony, the writer and singer of the mega-hit Rich Men North of Richmond, hit out at Republican candidates for president who discussed his song in the debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday.
“It was funny seeing my song at that presidential debate. Because I wrote that song about those people, you know, so for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up. It was funny kind of seeing the response to it,” the Virginian said in a statement on Friday.
A stark lament over the plight of the working class, Rich Men North of Richmond is top of the Billboard Hot 100, the first song by an artist with no chart history to make No 1.
The song has been championed by many on the political right as a populist anti-big-government hymn and criticized by some on the left for its attacks on welfare recipients.
In Wisconsin on Wednesday, an excerpt was played at the start of the Republican debate. One Fox News host, Martha MacCallum, said Anthony’s “lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government and of this country. Washington DC is about 100 miles north of Richmond”.
On stage stood seven Republican governors and congressmen and one venture capitalist.
McCallum said: “Governor DeSantis, why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?”
Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor running a distant second to Donald Trump, said: “Our country is in decline. This decline is not inevitable. It’s a choice. We need to send Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline. ”
However, on Friday, Anthony released a 10-minute video, shot in the cab of a truck as heavy rain fell, in which he rejected that answer and denied that he was a conservative figure.
“The one thing that has bothered me is seeing people wrap politics up in this. I’m disappointed to see it. Like, it’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them.”
The Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel has announced that Houston will host the Republican National Convention of 2028.
In a statement reported by the Associated Press, McDaniel said: “I am excited to announce Houston as the host city for the 2028 Republican National Convention,” and praised the RNC’s “smart business decision” last spring to allow for selecting the host city “earlier than over.”
“The entire RNC membership is eager to work with Mayor Sylvester Turner, the Houston Host Committee, and Houston First Corporation to follow in Milwaukee’s footsteps by delivering an incredible convention for our party,” McDaniel said.
Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbott welcomed the decision, calling Houston “one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States, a thriving center of economic development, and a cultural leader of Texas.”
The dates for 2028’s RNC convention have not yet been announced.
Georgia’s right-wing representative and Donald Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene said that booking the former president at Fulton county jail “will bond Trump to the very people who live in those neighborhoods.”
The Fulton county jail, also known as the Rice street jail due to its location, is currently being investigated by the justice department over reports of horrendous conditions and rampant violence.
“Processing Pres Trump in the Rice Street jail - where conditions are so inhumane inmates have died eaten alive by bed bugs - will bond Trump to the very people who live in those neighborhoods. The poor people in Atlanta have suffered more under Biden and Democrat policies than ever before,” Greene tweeted.
She added that the indictment and booking of Trump and his allies has “BACKFIRED.”
“That’s our President!”
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 25, 2023
“Free Trump!”
Processing Pres Trump in the Rice Street jail - where conditions are so inhumane inmates have died eaten alive by bed bugs - will bond Trump to the very people who live in those neighborhoods.
The poor people in Atlanta have suffered more…
Updated
Following the release of Donald Trump’s landmark mugshot at Fulton county jail, the internet – including those from both ends of the political spectrum - has been quick to commodify the photo and meme-ify it in a variety of ways.
The Trump 2024 campaign was quick to print the president’s hostile glare on to merchandise including mugs, coolers and premium cotton shirts ranging from small to 2XL. Accompanying all the new mugshot merchandise, which also included a 4in x 4in vinyl bumper sticker, were the words: “NEVER SURRENDER!”
The face of the first former American president to sit for a mugshot also found itself on shot glasses being sold by the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican group.
For the full story, click here:
DeSantis says he has raised $1m after primary debate
Florida’s Republican governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis announced that he has raised $1 million following Wednesday night’s primary debate, the Associated Press reports.
Speaking to the Associated Press, DeSantis’s campaign manager James Uthmeier said that DeSantis “showed Wednesday night that he is a proven leader who will deliver results as president, and we are thrilled with the flood of support we have received since his debate victory.”
A handful of DeSantis’s donors echoed similar sentiments to the AP after being briefed by the governor’s campaign staffers.
“It’s showing with the contributions that are coming in,” said investor and DeSantis donor Pete Snyder. “We had a huge day,” he added.
DeSantis’s reported $1 million in fundraising comes after his opponent Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign told the Associated Press that he has raised $450,000 following the debate.
Updated
The day so far
All of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election meddling case have now turned themselves in to authorities in Fulton county, with all but one being released on bond. Five have already asked to have their cases moved to federal court, which will give them more options to defend against allegations they plotted to prevent Joe Biden from getting the swing state’s crucial electoral votes.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
See the mug shots for five of the defendants who reported to the Fulton county jail today.
Trump’s legal team is resisting Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s proposal to start trials in the Georgia case on 23 October.
Republican president candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, but in fact has ties to prominent figures in both parties.
Polls of Republican primary voters have generally shown Donald Trump swamping his competitors, and a NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey released earlier this week was no different.
It showed 42% of voters in Iowa, the first state to vote in the Republican nomination process, naming Trump as their top choice. Florida governor Ron DeSantis comes in second place with 19% support, and all the other contenders ending up with mere single-digit support.
But, polls in Iowa have sometimes overstated a candidate’s position, such as in 1996, when Republican senator Bob Dole appeared to be leading in the state by a huge margin, only to win it barely when the caucuses were actually held. (He eventually won the GOP presidential nomination, only to lose the general election to incumbent Bill Clinton.)
Could such a dynamic repeat itself on 15 January of next year, when the GOP caucuses will be held? In an analysis, NBC News reports there’s no indication of that happening, at least not yet – the survey’s data shows Trump is in an even better position in the Hawkeye state than Dole was:
But a look one level deeper than the horse-race numbers uncovers some key differences between the two situations.
The first is that Dole’s initial support was clearly soft. In that 1995 Register poll, only 28% of Dole’s supporters said their minds were made up to vote for him; 67% said they were open to backing someone else.
The numbers for Trump in the 2023 poll are exactly reversed: 67% of his current supporters say their minds are made up, and they are not open to the idea of supporting other candidates.
Plus, 72% of respondents overall in that 1995 poll said their minds weren’t yet made up, compared with 52% in 2023. That means the atmosphere was more volatile and the potential for Dole to lose significant ground was apparent from the start. To compare the polls is to recognize that Trump may have already locked down more support than Dole ended up receiving in the actual caucuses.
Donald Trump is in real legal trouble in Georgia, but the spectacle of his arrest and mug shot yesterday was also a boon to his campaign to defeat other Republican challengers and become the party’s presidential nominee next year, the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports:
Less than 24 hours after the first primary debate of the 2024 election season concluded, viewers of America’s cable news programs could be forgiven if they forgot the event had occurred at all.
Rather than focusing on the post-debate coverage and analysis typically seen during past election cycles, CNN and MSNBC turned their attention on Thursday evening to Donald Trump’s arrest in Fulton county, Georgia, for charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. News of Trump’s surrender and the image of the first mugshot ever taken of a former US president also dominated the homepages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
The wall-to-wall news coverage of Trump’s arrest served as yet another example of the former president’s unique ability to suck up all available media oxygen, making it nearly impossible for his opponents’ message to break through to voters. That dynamic quickly drowned out coverage of the debate and probably mitigated, if not erased, any advantage Republican candidates might have gained from their performances.
Rather than participating in the debate on Wednesday, Trump instead chose to sit down with an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The interview aired on X, formerly known as Twitter, and it had already garnered more than 250m views as of Friday morning.
Even though Trump did not attend the debate, his absence and his looming arrest shaped much of the conversation and sparked its most illuminating moments. After spending the first hour of the debate discussing issues like the climate crisis and the economy, Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum turned their attention to Trump – or “the elephant not in the room”, as Baier said.
More of the defendants indicted in Georgia on charges related to attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the state want their cases moved to federal court, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:
New: Fulton defendant Cathy Latham files for federal removal. That means all three of the GOP electors (her, Shawn Still and David Shafer) have sought to remove the case pic.twitter.com/CSz93tq4nv
— Tamar Hallerman (@TamarHallerman) August 25, 2023
The tally of defendants who have sought federal removal is now five, by my count (three electors + Meadows + Clark). We're expecting Trump and others will do the same in the days ahead
— Tamar Hallerman (@TamarHallerman) August 25, 2023
Should they succeed, the New York Times reports it could have a number of benefits for their defense:
State criminal prosecutions can be removed to federal court under a federal statute that allows for such a change of venue if the case involves federal officials and pertains to actions taken “under color” of their office. The term refers to things done in an official capacity or as part of official duties.
Last month, a federal judge rejected Mr. Trump’s efforts to have another state criminal case against him removed to federal court. That case, in New York, centers on Mr. Trump’s role in hush-money payments to an actress in pornographic films. In his order, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein wrote: “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts.”
If the motions for removal of the Georgia case are successful, the defendants would probably then argue in federal court that they should not be charged for state crimes, and would base that argument on the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that federal laws generally take precedence over state laws.
…
Removal to federal court would broaden the jury pool for a potential trial. Instead of drawing jurors just from Fulton County, where 26 percent of voters chose Mr. Trump in the 2020 election, they would be drawn from a 10-county region that includes Fulton along with more suburban and exurban counties where Mr. Trump won just under 34 percent of the vote.
A number of legal experts say that moving the Georgia case to federal court would not allow Mr. Trump to pardon himself, if re-elected, after a conviction in the case. The Constitution grants presidents the power to pardon “offenses against the United States,” but the crimes charged in the Georgia case, wherever they are tried, are offenses against the state of Georgia, said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law expert at Georgia State University.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has obtained the mug shots of five of Donald Trump’s co-defendants who turned themselves in on Friday morning:
Booking photos for Michael Roman, Robert Cheeley, Trevian Kutti and Misty Hampton. @ajc pic.twitter.com/jst13NQEQU
— Jozsef Papp (@JozsefPapp_) August 25, 2023
Pastor Stephen Cliffgard Lee dressed the part for his surrender today.
— Tamar Hallerman (@TamarHallerman) August 25, 2023
With his booking, all 19 defendants have turned themselves in. pic.twitter.com/0MFmumAI6y
No hearing today for only jailed Trump co-defendant
The only Donald Trump co-defendant to actually be jailed in Fulton county is Harrison Floyd, who did not come to a bond agreement before turning himself in this week.
An associate of the Black Voices for Trump group, Floyd is accused of illegally influencing a witness and conspiring to commit false statements. Earlier today, it appeared that a judge would hold a hearing into his case, but that turned out not to be the case, according to Atlanta broadcaster 11Alive and the Washington Post:
He was on calendars for both courts this morning. Both said they were erroneous entries. We've thought it's been referred to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is handling the case.
— Nick Wooten (@ByNickEWoot) August 25, 2023
I am at home sick, so I don't have much else beyond that at this point. 🤷♂️
He, unlike the others in the case, will make a first appearance because a bond agreement wasn't reached with the DA's office.
— Nick Wooten (@ByNickEWoot) August 25, 2023
Judge Scott McAfee told reporters in his courtroom a little while ago that there was "misinformation" on the docket, and Floyd would not be appearing before him today https://t.co/GbCh4O3aIi
— Holly Bailey (@hollybdc) August 25, 2023
Updated
Donald Trump and most of his co-defendants paid brief visits to the Fulton county jail to be processed before leaving on bond. But as the Guardian’s Jewel Wicker reports, extended stays in the Atlanta facility can have deadly consequences:
Millions of people around the world watched on Thursday as former president Donald Trump surrendered to the Fulton County jail, and then promptly left the building on $200,000 bond. Local activists and attorneys say it’s a starkly different experience from what the more than 1,500 inmates who are booked into the facility each month typically face in the overcrowded jail, which has been the subject of ongoing reports of horrific conditions and has seen a spate of recent deaths.
Along with 18 co-defendants, Trump was indicted last week on racketeering charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the Georgia presidential election results in 2020.
The local and national media have been camping outside the Fulton county jail – often called the Rice Street jail in reference to the street on which it is located – all week in anticipation of Trump and his allies voluntarily surrendering there, coinciding with a time of increased security for the jail and sheriff’s office.
In July, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the conditions of the jail, citing a number of reports that allege “an incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth, that the Fulton County Jail is structurally unsafe, that prevalent violence has resulted in serious injuries and homicides, and that officers are being prosecuted for using excessive force”.
Donald Trump is now facing four separate criminal cases: one brought in New York by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg; another in Georgia by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and two federal indictments brought by the special counsel Jack Smith.
Trump is also running for president, and it seems likely he will spend the next 15 months alternating between courtrooms and the campaign trail. Here’s a graphic illustrating what we know about the dueling schedules so far:
Updated
Ex-justice department official Jeffrey Clark's mugshot released
In the final days of his presidential term, Donald Trump tried to appoint the justice department official Jeffrey Clark acting attorney general as part of a plan to disrupt the electoral vote process in swing states that voted for Joe Biden. He was thwarted by a revolt among senior justice department staff, and Clark was earlier this month indicted in Georgia for his role in the plot.
Clark turned himself at the Fulton county jail overnight, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has his mugshot:
Jeffrey Clark mug shot. The former DOJ official surrendered overnight pic.twitter.com/vGxNK0gTBx
— Tamar Hallerman (@TamarHallerman) August 25, 2023
Updated
Final Trump co-defendants surrender in Georgia
Two of the last co-defendants who were indicted in Georgia along with Donald Trump for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago surrendered to authorities today.
According to Fulton county jail records, Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti turned herself in after being charged with threatening election worker Ruby Freeman. Also surrendering today was Stephen Lee, a longtime police chaplain in Georgia who traveled to Freeman’s home and identified himself as a pastor trying to help.
Here’s a rundown of all the 19 defendants named in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling indictment, which is centered on the Trump campaign’s attempt to prevent Biden from winning Georgia’s electoral votes weeks after the ballots had been counted:
A social media post viewed nearly 6m times of what appears to be Donald Trump fans wildly celebrating in a bar as the mugshot of the former president is broadcast on a large screen, appears to be a well-crafted hoax.
The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by disenchanted Republicans, shared the video on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, but Newsweek claims: “the footage is actually of England soccer fans ... and has been widely edited as a meme.”
The Lincoln Project post doesn’t say where the video was sourced, just the words “TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED”. Since posting the video 12 hours ago, the Lincoln Project has defiantly reposted the footage twice more.
TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED #TrumpMugshot pic.twitter.com/vnbhxA8Amh
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 25, 2023
Updated
Ahead of the surrender, Donald Trump shook up his legal team and retained the top Georgia attorney Steven Sadow, who filed a notice of appearance with the Fulton county superior court as lead counsel, replacing Drew Findling. Trump’s other lawyer in the case, Jennifer Little, is staying on.
The reason for the abrupt recalibration was unclear, and Trump’s aides suggested it was unrelated to performance. Still, Trump has a record of firing lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations but were unable to stave off charges.
Findling was also unable to exempt Trump from having his mugshot taken, according to people familiar with the matter – something that personally irritated Trump, even though the Fulton county sheriff’s office had always indicated they were uninterested in making such an accommodation. His mugshot was not taken in his other criminal cases.
Trump opposes October trial start in Georgia election case
In a clear sign of her belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis on Thursday asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October. This developed after one of the co-defendants requested a speedy trial and was given that ultra-fast date, approved by the judge in the case.
Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date within hours, underscoring the former president’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election.
Willis’ request to schedule the trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants to begin in October came after one of the co-defendants, Trump’s former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.
In a court filing, the Trump attorney Steve Sadow notified a judge that Trump will soon file a motion to sever his case from Chesebro – indicating the diverging interests of the people ensnared in the indictment.
Sadow also said Trump will seek to sever his case from “any other co-defendant who makes a similar request” for a quick trial. He wrote:
President Trump further respectfully puts the Court on notice that he requests the Court set a scheduling conference at its earliest convenience so he can be heard on the State’s motions for entry of pretrial scheduling order and to specially set trial
Updated
Among the defendants who surrendered to Georgia authorities early this morning was Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official charged with violating the state’s Rico act and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings.
Clark, who worked as assistant attorney general for the DoJ’s civil division from September 2020 to January 2021, was booked at the Fulton county jail on Friday morning and released on a $100,000 bond.
In the indictment, prosecutors said Clark pushed to send out an official justice department letter claiming that investigators had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States”. Donald Trump supported Clark and planned to name him acting attorney general until he was threatened with mass resignations if he did so, according to the indictment.
On Tuesday, Clark had asked a judge to prohibit the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis from arresting him by a Friday deadline, arguing that his case should be handled by federal courts because of his work as a federal officer.
The US district judge Steve Jones denied Clark’s request, as well as a similar request by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Updated
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman, posted a mocked-up mugshot on X, formerly known as Twitter, in a show of solidarity with Donald Trump after his surrender to Fulton county officials.
Alongside the hashtag MAGAMugshot, Greene wrote:
I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis who is nothing more than a political hitman tasked with taking out Biden’s top political opponent.
I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis who is nothing more than a political hitman tasked with taking out Biden’s top political opponent. “Persecution, not prosecution.” #MAGAMugshot pic.twitter.com/BLAJ16g6Je
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 24, 2023
Revealed: Vivek Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins
Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.
But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.
Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing megadonor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.
Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.
Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.
Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.
The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.
Vivek Ramaswamy raised $450,000 in first hours after GOP debate
Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, took in $450,000 in the hours after his appearance at the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday.
Ramaswamy, a political newcomer whose bid for the GOP nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol, took in an average donation of $38, campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told AP on Thursday.
Ramaswamy has largely been self-funding his campaign. On Wednesday night, he repeatedly said all the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee were “bought and paid for” by donors.
The Guardian’s columnist Margaret Sullivan writes how Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting.
Mere minutes after Donald Trump’s mugshot was released, the Trump campaign had already turned the image into a merchandizing opportunity.
The former president’s re-election campaign announced in an email that it would give away a “free” T-shirt with Trump’s mugshot printed on it for $47.
The caption on the shirt reads “NEVER SURRENDER” – which is literally what Trump was doing when the mugshot was taken on Thursday.
Trump campaign is already selling a t-shirt with the mugshot on it pic.twitter.com/TsXJNkmE7i
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) August 25, 2023
Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s indictments are likely to take a toll on his prospects of winning the presidential election, according to a new poll.
The Politico magazine/Ipsos poll suggests Americans are taking the cases against Trump seriously and that a majority are skeptical of his attempts to portray himself as a victim of a legally baseless witch-hunt.
About 51% of respondents – 14% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats – said Trump is likely guilty in the federal case in which he is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against rights. Another 52% said he is likely guilty in the federal case regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Nearly 60% of respondents said they wanted the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case to take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin next year. Federal prosecutors have proposed the trial begin 2 Jan 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have pushed for a April 2026 trial start date.
Nearly one-third of respondents said that a conviction in the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case would make them less likely to support Trump, including 34% of independents.
And half of the country said Trump should go to prison if he is convicted in the justice department’s 2020 election case, according to the poll.
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski points out that Donald Trump is polling better than he did at any point in 2020.
The former president faces 91 felony counts and has been charged with attempting to subvert democracy, risking national security secrets and falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star.
It is still early, but Trump is polling better than he did at any point in 2020 and if we had the same polling error we did that year he would win.
— Andy (@KFILE) August 25, 2023
US civil war ‘is going to happen’ over Trump prosecutions, says Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, said a second US civil war is “going to happen” if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump.
“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you do want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night.
We’re not going to keep putting up with this.
Palin was speaking to the rightwing network as Trump surrendered at a jail in Fulton county, Georgia, and a historic mugshot was released.
Academics have long warned of the potential for Trump to stoke violence worse than the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, when supporters he told to “fight like hell” to stop certification of Biden’s victory stormed the Capitol building. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot.
Barbara F Walter, author of How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them and a CIA advisor, has written:
No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.
But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.
And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.
Trump describes 'terrible experience' of being booked at Fulton county jail
Donald Trump described his experience of being booked at the Fulton county jail on Thursday as “terrible” and “very sad” after he surrendered to authorities on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Speaking to Newsmax after flying out of Georgia, Trump said he was treated “nicely” during his booking process but said his arrest was a “very sad day for the country”. He said:
I took a mugshot. I’d never heard the words mug shot. They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.
He added:
I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then I’ve gone through the same experience three other times. In my whole life, I didn’t know anything about indictments. And now I’ve been indicted, like, four times
In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said:
It is not a comfortable feeling – especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.
Trump faces 13 charges in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering case, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.
Mugshots define eras.
Bugsy Siegel peering malevolently from beneath his fedora in a 1928 booking photo summed up the perverse romance of gangsters in the prohibition age.
Nearly half a century later, mugshots of David Bowie, elegantly dressed but dead-eyed after his arrest for drug possession, and a dishevelled Janis Joplin, detained for “vulgar and indecent language”, spoke to the shock waves created by 1960s counterculture.
Now comes what Donald Trump Jr described as “the most iconic photo in the history of US politics” before the booking picture of his father glaring into the camera was even taken. But whether deeply divided Americans view the first ever mugshot of a former president as that of a gangster or a rock star is very much in the politics of the beholder.
Trump’s hostility shines through as he turns his eyes up toward the camera above him and in his taut, downturned mouth as he is booked into the Fulton county jail on charges of trying to steal the 2020 presidential election. Dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, he makes no attempt to put on a smile like some of his co-defendants in their mugshots.
The picture does not flatter but it does convey the message many of Trump’s supporters want to hear – belligerence.
Elon Musk, owner of X, reacted to Donald Trump’s return to the social media site simply writing: “Next-level.”
Next-level https://t.co/E81JKWTJPS
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2023
Updated
Two Trump co-defendants face noon deadline to surrender to authorities
Most of the 19 defendants charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia to keep Donald Trump in power have turned themselves in to Fulton county authorities.
Jail records show that another five defendants surrendered at Fulton county jail overnight and early Friday. That brings the number known to have turned themselves in to be booked to 17. Only Trevian Kutti and Steven Lee have yet to turn themselves in.
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has set a deadline of noon today for all 19 defendants in the Georgia election subversion case to turn themselves in to be booked.
Five more defendants turn themselves in to Fulton county authorities
Five defendants accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia surrendered to authorities at Fulton county jail overnight.
Fulton county jail records show that Robert Cheeley, Jeffrey Clark, Misty Hampton, Michael Roman and Shawn Still surrendered early Friday.
Donald Trump intentionally scheduled his booking at the Fulton county jail to take place during primetime viewing hours on Thursday, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell previously reported.
The former president – seeking to distract from the indignity of the surrender by turning things into a circus – in essence had his lawyers negotiate the booking to take place during the prime viewing hours for the cable news networks.
The strategy to turn surrenders in each of his four criminal cases into spectacles has been an effort to discredit the indictments, as well as to capitalize on the information void left by prosecutors after such events to foist his own spin on the charges.
While he would prefer not to be charged, once indicted, Trump has moved to present himself as defiant and lament to his supporters that he supposedly is the victim of partisan investigations, for which he needs their political and financial support.
In a sense Donald Trump’s surrender at the Fulton county jail on Thursday marks the end of a two-year chapter of investigating his efforts to lead a coup to overturn the 2020 election results. It also marks the beginning of the next chapter – the trials to convict him.
Still, it would be a mistake to assume that the mugshot and the spectacle of Trump’s surrender at jail on Thursday will harm Trump politically. Instead, it is only likely to more deeply entrench support from those who back Trump and believe he is being persecuted.
As both a candidate and president, Trump has made the politics of grievance, the feeling of being persecuted and wronged, central to his political identity. Trump is already using his indictments to rally his supporters. When he surrendered in New York earlier this year, officials waived a mugshot. Trump’s campaign quickly released a fake one and began fundraising with it instead.
The booking, and the indictment that came before it, is also the latest step in what is likely to be a sustained and nasty battle, both in the public domain and in court, between Trump and Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney. Trump has already attacked Willis, a Democrat and the first Black woman to hold her office, saying – of all things – that she is racist. Willis has not responded to those attacks, and urged those in her office to ignore them, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” she wrote in an email earlier this month.
We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.
Trump allies, both in Georgia and in Washington DC, have already begun separate efforts to make Willis’s work as difficult as possible. But Willis, who has a reputation for being an aggressive prosecutor, hasn’t blinked. So far, she’s headed off last-ditch efforts by Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, two of Trump’s co-defendants, to avoid surrendering.
For all the fanfare of Trump’s surrender, the most significant developments may be what happens far away from Rice Street and the Fulton county courthouse. Trump wields a commanding lead in the polls for the Republican nomination for president.
Asked during the first Republican debate on Wednesday if they would support Trump if he was the nominee, nearly all of the candidates said yes.
One by one this week, they’ve made their way to 901 Rice Street, the address of the notorious Fulton county jail. Lawyers, government officials, a former state party chair and others have all surrendered to authorities after being charged as part of an alleged criminal effort to overturn the 2020 election.
On Thursday, the head of that enterprise, Donald Trump, himself surrendered, marking another historic moment for a president who has reshaped the rules of American politics. This is the closest that Trump has been to a jail cell to date and serves as a blunt reminder that no American or former president is above the law.
Like nearly everything Trump does, his surrender was orchestrated to be a spectacle. He deliberately timed his surrender, 7.30pm, to maximize cable news coverage. Reporters camped outside the jail all day on Thursday as temperatures reached mid-90s F and Trump supporters gathered for a demonstration. There was wall-to-wall news coverage of Trump’s motorcade and arrival at the jail. While politicians typically try and shift attention away from their criminal legal troubles, Trump has embraced it, feeding into the circuit by advertising his surrender time.
Despite Trump’s brashness, the gravity of the moment is underscored by the venue where Trump surrendered. In his other three cases, Trump has surrendered in courthouses and then quickly appeared in a courtroom for an arraignment. On Thursday, he’ll turn himself in at a jailhouse that has been so beset by horrific conditions that it’s under investigation from the Department of Justice. For the first time, he’ll have to post a cash bond – $200,000 – to guarantee his release.
In the other three instances, Trump has avoided the indignity of a mugshot. On Thursday, he got one that will be released to the public. For a man who cares deeply about perception, the image released on Thursday by the Fulton county sheriff will be inescapable, forever establishing him as the only president to ever be criminally prosecuted with a mugshot. It is also likely to be one that is forever part of America’s story – a snapshot of the president and a movement who tried to bend American institutions and tested the contours of American governance and the rule of law at every opportunity.
Trump tweets mugshot in return to former Twitter platform X
Donald Trump tweeted for the first time since 2021 on Thursday night, posting the mugshot from his booking at Fulton county jail in Georgia on charges of election interference earlier on Thursday.
The former president returned to the social media site, now known as X, with a post linking to his website and featuring the words “Election interference! Never surrender!” following his surrender at Fulton County jail on racketeering and conspiracy charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Trump has previously said he would stick with his new platform Truth Social. He reportedly signed an 18-month exclusivity agreement to post on Truth Social when it launched, which expired in late June.
It has been Trump’s main source of direct communication with his followers since he began posting on the app regularly in May. The former president has used it to promote his allies, criticise his opponents and defend his reputation amid legal scrutiny from state, congressional and federal investigators.
Trump had 6.4m followers on Truth Social as of Thursday. He still has more than 88m Twitter followers despite being banned from the platform following the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress by his supporters, amid the risk of further incitement of violence.
On 19 November the San Francisco-based app reversed the ban under billionaire Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” who bought Twitter last year.
Musk restored the former president’s account after running a poll that received more than 15m votes and just narrowly won at nearly 52%. Despite the account being restored, Trump did not tweet until Thursday.
He has previously used Twitter and other social media platforms to make false claims that his defeat in the 2020 election was due to widespread voter fraud and to share other conspiracy theories.
Donald Trump’s mugshot – a first for a former American president in the country’s history – was released by the Fulton county sheriff’s office on Thursday after Georgia authorities denied his request to be excused from picture day.
Trump, who has been indicted four times this year, had so far managed to avoid the specter of a mugshot, though he has sought to profit from merch with a fake booking photo.
Asked weeks earlier whether the former president would be required to take a photo, the Fulton county sheriff Pat Labat, a Democrat, said:
It doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mugshot ready for you.
Donald Trump defiant in historic mugshot after surrendering at Fulton county jail
Good morning, US politics blog readers. The former US president, Donald Trump, surrendered to Fulton county authorities on Thursday evening on racketeering and conspiracy charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia.
Trump, who has been indicted four times this year, tweeted a photo of his mugshot and the words “Election interference. Never surrender!” along with a link to his website, which directs to a fundraising page, after his release from the Atlanta jail.
Trump’s booking marked yet another stunning moment for the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 race as he became the first ever US president to have a mugshot taken. He denies wrongdoing in Georgia and in three other indictments which have produced a total of 91 criminal charges.
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has set a deadline of noon today for the defendants in the Georgia election subversion case to turn themselves in to be booked. In a clear sign of her belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, Willis asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October.
Within hours, Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date, underscoring the former president’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
12pm eastern time: The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has set a deadline of noon on Friday for all 19 defendants in the Georgia election subversion case to turn themselves in to be booked.
2pm: Vice-president Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will welcome the Las Vegas Aces to the White House to celebrate their 2022 WNBA Championship.
President Joe Biden is vacationing in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. He plans to return to Washington on Saturday.
The House and Senate are out.
