Rudy Giuliani turns himself in on Georgia 2020 election charges after bond is set at $150,000
Rudy Giuliani turned himself in at a jail in Atlanta on Wednesday on charges related to efforts to overturn then-President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. The former New York mayor, was indicted last week along with Trump and 17 others. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said they participated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to subvert the will of the voters after the Republican president lost to Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020. Bond for Giuliani, who was released after booking like the other defendants, was set at $150,000, second only to Trump’s $200,000. Giuliani, 79, is accused of spearheading Trump’s efforts to compel state lawmakers in Georgia and other closely contested states to ignore the will of voters and illegally appoint electoral college electors favorable to Trump. Other high-profile defendants also surrendered Wednesday, including Jenna Ellis, an attorney who prosecutors say was involved in efforts to convince state lawmakers to unlawfully appoint presidential electors, and lawyer Sidney Powell, accused of making false statements about the election in Georgia and helping to organize a breach of voting equipment in rural Coffee County. Georgia was one of several key states Trump lost by slim margins, prompting the Republican and his allies to proclaim, without evidence, that the election was rigged in favor of his Democratic rival Biden. Giuliani is charged with making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phony paperwork and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office to appoint an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors. Outside the Fulton County Jail Wednesday afternoon, Giuliani laughed when asked if he regretted allying himself with Trump. “I am very, very honored to be involved in this case because this case is a fight for our way of life,” Giuliani told reporters. “This indictment is a travesty. It’s an attack on — not just me, not just President Trump, not just the people in this indictment, some of whom I don’t even know – this is an attack on the American people.” Trump, the early front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, has said he plans to turn himself in at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday. He and his allies have characterized the investigation as politically motivated and have heavily criticized District Attorney Willis, a Democrat. Also Wednesday, Willis’ team urged a judge to reject requests from two of the people indicted — former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark — to avoid having to be booked in jail while they fight to move the case to federal court. Willis has set a deadline of noon on Friday for the people indicted last week in the election subversion case to turn themselves in. Her team has been negotiating bond amounts and conditions with the lawyers for the defendants before they surrender at the jail. Misty Hampton, who was the Coffee County elections director when a breach of election equipment happened there, had her bond set at $10,000. David Shafer, who’s a former Georgia Republican Party chair and served as one of 16 fake electors for Trump, and Cathy Latham, who’s accused in the Coffee County breach and was also a fake elector, turned themselves in Wednesday morning. Also surrendering Wednesday were lawyers Ray Smith and Kenneth Chesebro, who prosecutors said helped organize the fake electors meeting at the state Capitol in December 2020. Attorney John Eastman, who pushed a plan to keep Trump in power, and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman who was accused of participating in the breach of election equipment in Coffee County, turned themselves in Tuesday. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has said it will release booking photos at 4 p.m. each day, but Shafer appeared to post his on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, just after 7 a.m. Wednesday with the message, “Good morning! #NewProfilePicture.” While Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere are calling for Willis to be punished for indicting Trump, a group of Black pastors and community activists gathered outside the state Capitol in Atlanta Wednesday to pray for and proclaim their support for the Democratic prosecutor. Bishop Reginald Jackson, who leads Georgia’s African Methodist Episcopal churches, said that Willis is under attack “as a result of her courage and determination.” Former White House chief of staff Meadows and former Justice Department official Clark are seeking to move their cases from Fulton County Superior Court to federal court. Both argue the actions that gave rise to the charges in the indictment were related to their work as federal officials and that the state charges against them should be dismissed. While those motions are pending, they argue, they should not have to turn themselves in for booking at the Fulton County Jail. In a filing Wednesday, Willis’ team argued that Meadows has failed to demonstrate any hardship that would authorize the judge to prevent his arrest. The filing notes that other defendants, including Trump, had agreed to voluntarily surrender by the deadline. In a second filing, Willis’ team argued that Clark’s effort to halt any Fulton County proceedings while his motion is pending amounts to an attempt “to avoid the inconvenience and unpleasantness of being arrested or subject to the mandatory state criminal process.” Republished with the permission of The Associate Press.
Supreme Court voting rights ruling stuns minority voters, who hope it expands their representation
This week’s Supreme Court decision ordering Alabama to redraw its congressional districts was seen by many minority lawmakers and voting rights activists as a stunning victory with the potential to become a major stepping stone for undoing political maps that dilute the strength of communities of color. Hank Sanders, a former Alabama state lawmaker who has long been politically active in the state, knew there would be a decision since the court heard arguments in the case last fall. He was not anticipating being happy with the outcome, given that previous rulings of the conservative-leaning court had essentially gutted some of its most important provisions. “I was afraid they were going to go ahead and wipe out section 2,” he said, referring to the part of the Voting Rights Act at stake in the Alabama case. He was at his law office Thursday in Selma, scene of one of the most pivotal moments in the Civil Rights Movement, when news of the 5-4 ruling in favor of Alabama’s Black voters was announced. “It was a surprise that was good for my day,” he said. How the decision will affect similar lawsuits against political maps drawn in other states is unclear, although voting rights groups say the ruling provides firm guidance for lower courts to follow. The court majority found that Alabama concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it much more difficult to elect more than one candidate of their choice. Alabama’s Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found. Just one of its seven congressional districts is majority Black, in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. Similar maps have been drawn in other states, primarily by Republican-controlled legislatures. Kareem Crayton, the Brennan Center’s senior director for voting and representation, called the court’s decision “a welcome surprise” and said challenges to the maps in Louisiana and Georgia were the most similar to the Alabama case. While it was considering the Alabama case, the Supreme Court had placed a hold on a lower court ruling in Louisiana allowing creation of a second majority-Black district. That’s now likely to be lifted. A federal judge last year also ruled that some of Georgia’s U.S. House and state legislative districts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, but he had allowed the districts to be used in the 2022 elections because it was too close to the election to redraw them. Maps in all three states could have to be redrawn for the 2024 elections. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said in a statement that the court’s action reaffirmed his own belief that Louisiana’s map, which was drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature, violated the law. “As I said when I vetoed it, Louisiana’s current congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act,” he said. “Louisiana’s voting population is one-third Black. We know that in compliance with the principles of the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana can have a congressional map where two of our six districts are majority Black.” Rep. Troy Carter, a Black Democrat representing Louisiana’s lone district that is majority Black, said the Legislature should immediately convene to draw a second majority-minority district. “This Supreme Court ruling is a win not just for Alabamians but for Louisianans as well,” Carter said in an emailed statement. “Rarely do we get a second chance to get things right — now Louisiana can.” In Georgia, Bishop Reginald Jackson, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional map, said he was ecstatic when he heard the news about the ruling and hopes it will boost their case. He said he became involved in the lawsuit amid concerns that the state’s Black population had increased while the number of Black congressional representatives had decreased with the last round of redistricting. “So how could you have less Black representation when you have more Blacks moving into the state than before?” said Jackson, who presides over 534 African Methodist Episcopal churches in Georgia with over 90,000 parishioners The Alabama case, along with pending lawsuits in Georgia and Louisiana, means Black voters will likely have an opportunity to elect candidates in three additional districts, said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, one of the organizations that has spearheaded voting rights challenges in the states. She said litigation in Texas by other plaintiff groups could mean additional seats there where minority voters “have the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice that don’t exist now.” Texas state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, a Democrat who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said the case was a “major win for voting rights.” She said following recent decisions by the current court in other areas she considers fundamental, such as last year’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion, she was concerned about the direction the justices would take with voting rights and was relieved to see Thursday’s outcome. “As we are seeing the Latino community rise in many ways, we want to ensure that Latino power is translated into Latino political power,” Neave Criado said. Latinos and whites share an equal proportion of the Texas population, about 40% each, according to 2022 Census figures. Nina Perales, vice-president of litigation with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the ruling closes the door on Texas using arguments similar to those made by Alabama as the cases there go forward. Perales leads the litigation for a similar case out of Texas, which is based on the redistricting maps created in 2021. In addition to the Voting Rights Act challenge to Texas’ congressional districts, similar section 2 claims have been brought against numerous voting districts used for state legislatures and local governments around the country. Attorney Mark Gaber argued a case this week alleging Washington’s state legislative districts diluted the voting strength of Hispanic residents and will be arguing a similar case next week involving Native Americans and North Dakota’s state legislative districts. He thinks Thursday’s ruling will strengthen the case. In Alabama, the question
