By Jack Queen
ATLANTA (Reuters) -Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani surrendered on Wednesday at an Atlanta jail to face state charges arising from actions he was accused of taking to overturn the former U.S. president’s 2020 election loss.
Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and New York City mayor, was ordered to pay a $150,000 bond and not to intimidate any of his 18 co-defendants or witnesses in the case, according to court papers.
“This indictment is a travesty,” Giuliani told reporters after his jail appearance. “This is an assault on the Constitution.”
Eight other of Trump’s co-defendants in the criminal case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis accusing him and his associates of trying to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia also have surrendered, according to county records.
Trump was set to turn himself in on Thursday to face his fourth criminal indictment this year. The remaining 10 co-defendants named in the Georgia indictment have until Friday to surrender. Trump has called his four indictments politically motivated.
The front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden, Trump continues to make false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud. Giuliani played a prominent public role in the Trump campaign’s efforts to push these false claims.
In the Georgia case, Giuliani was accused of making numerous false statements about election fraud, including to officials in other states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, in a failed bid to convince them to approve an alternative slate of electors in the formal congressional certification of the election results to keep Trump in power.
Giuliani and other Trump allies were also accused of making false statements to Georgia lawmakers about the election.
Four co-defendants also surrendered at the jail on Wednesday, according to records posted on the Fulton County sheriff’s office website. They were attorneys Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Ray Smith, all of whom were charged with playing a role in the attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat.
On Tuesday, Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman and Republican poll watcher Scott Hall surrendered while former Georgia Republican Party leaders Cathy Latham and David Shafer – were booked overnight, according to the jail.
Shafer, Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark have filed petitions to have their cases moved to federal court.
A federal judge in Atlanta on Wednesday rejected separate bids by Clark and Meadows to avoid a Friday noon deadline to surrender to authorities in Fulton County.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to two sets of federal criminal charges brought by Jack Smith, a special counsel named by Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, concerning the efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his possession of classified documents after leaving office. Trump also pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan case involving hush money paid before the 2016 election to a porn star.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in Atlanta, additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Jacqueline Thomsen in WashingtonEditing by Scott Malone, Will Dunham and Matthew Lewis)
