First Donald Trump allies in Georgia election subversion case surrender
- The ex-US president’s former lawyer John Eastman and Republican poll watcher Scott Hall turned themselves in at an Atlanta jail
- Meanwhile, Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows failed in a bid to delay his surrender while he seeks to move his case from state to federal court
The first of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in Georgia’s criminal case accusing the former US president and his associates of subverting his 2020 election loss surrendered at an Atlanta jail on Tuesday, according to county records and a statement.
Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman and Republican poll watcher Scott Hall both surrendered to the county sheriff’s office, two days before Trump himself was set to turn himself into face his fourth criminal indictment this year.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican 2024 White House nomination, has lambasted all the prosecutions as politically motivated and continues to claim falsely that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
Eastman said in a statement he would surrender, the day after agreeing to a US$100,000 bond agreement.
“I am here today to surrender to an indictment that should never have been brought,” Eastman said in the statement. “It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Hall, a Republican poll watcher in Georgia’s Fulton County, was booked by the county’s sheriff’s office on Tuesday and has not yet been released, the jail records showed.
