Trump surrenders, is booked in Georgia election-interference case

Fulton County’s booking system recorded Trump as having “blonde or strawberry” hair, a height of 6-foot-3 and weighing 215 pounds.

Trump was quickly released on a $200,000 bond and will now wait until an arraignment next month to enter pleas in this election-interference case. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking an Oct. 23 trial date for Trump and the other 18 defendants in the case, but Trump is opposing that start date.

Earlier in the day, Trump replaced his lead counsel, Drew Findling, with veteran criminal attorney  Steven Sadow, who is known for defending a number of rappers in high-profile criminal cases.

The former president was indicted last week by a grand jury in Fulton County over his efforts to overturn Georgia’s results in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. He faces 13 criminal counts, including racketeering, filing false documents, conspiracy to commit forgery and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.

Thursday’s proceedings in Atlanta mark the fourth time that the 45th president has surrendered this year following an indictment.

Trump, the frontrunner in the undefined, also is dealing with a Manhattan case over hush-money payments, a Miami case over classified documents and a Washington, D.C., case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

He has denied wrongdoing and argued all of the cases are politically motivated. Many Republican voters have agreed with his take and rallied around Trump in the past few months, leaving him with 55.4% support in primary polls, according to a RealClearPolitics moving average of surveys as of Thursday.

See: Trump calls his four indictments ‘nonsense’ during Tucker Carlson interview airing opposite the GOP debate

The Fulton County prosecutor’s case was spurred in part by a recording of a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump said Raffensperger, a Republican, should “find 11,780 votes,” or enough to erase Biden’s edge in the state.

In a post on his Truth Social platform Thursday afternoonu, Trump reiterated his assertion that the phone call was “perfect,” and he repeated his criticisms of Willis, describing her as a “Radical Left, Lowlife District Attorney.”

Willis, a Democrat, has set a Friday deadline for defendants to turn themselves, and Trump associates Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows are among the high-profile individuals who have met that deadline.

Now read: Trump would have to wait years if he were to be pardoned in Georgia case — with no president or governor able to deliver