Prosecutors in Atlanta will ask a choose on Tuesday to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, who’s accused together with former President Donald J. Trump within the Georgia election interference case. The district lawyer dealing with the case filed a movement final week accusing Mr. Floyd of intimidating potential witnesses by way of his social media posts.
Mr. Floyd’s attorneys argued in a brand new submitting that the posts weren’t intimidating. As well as, they famous that Mr. Trump himself has issued provocative social media posts concerning the case, and that no motion has been taken towards him. That, they are saying, makes “the state’s choice to go after Harrison Floyd tough to justify.”
Either side are scheduled to argue the case earlier than the presiding choose, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Courtroom, on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr. Floyd, a former head of a gaggle referred to as Black Voices for Trump, was paid by the 2020 Trump marketing campaign, and is considered one of 19 folks, together with the previous president, who have been named as defendants in a 97-page racketeering indictment in August . . The indictment accused Mr. Trump and his associates are accused of orchestrating a “prison enterprise” to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election in Georgia. 4 of the accused pleaded responsible and promised to cooperate with prosecutors.
Along with a state racketeering cost, Mr. Floyd faces two separate felony counts within the case, for his position in what the indictment describes as a scheme to intimidate Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election employee, and drive her to make a false confession. that he dedicated electoral fraud.
In his movement final week, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district lawyer, mentioned Mr. Floyd directed the offensive social media posts to Ms. Freeman and to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, amongst others, “in an effort to intimidate co-defendants and witnesses. “
In a single instance cited within the movement, Mr. Floyd prompt that Jenna Ellis, a co-defendant who pleaded responsible final month, lied in a subsequent assertion to prosecutors, calling her “a complete mess.”
“Is it like Ruby Freeman was PRESSURED?” he wrote in one other new one postwith an audio clip of Ms. Freeman recorded on a police physique digital camera in 2020.
Mr. Floyd’s attorneys referred to as the hassle to revoke his bond “a retaliatory transfer,” partially as a result of Mr. Floyd had lately turned down a plea deal provided by the state. In addition they argued of their submitting that directing feedback at one other X consumer, or “tagging” them in a put up, isn’t any totally different than yelling “a message at somebody sitting in throughout from a packed Mercedes-Benz stadium in the course of an Atlanta Falcons soccer recreation.”
A ruling towards Mr. Floyd may have ramifications for Mr. Trump, who’s embroiled in battles over gag orders in different civil and prison instances towards him. The bond settlement of Mr. Trump in Georgia specified that he “is not going to take any motion,” together with social media posts, “to intimidate any particular person he is aware of to be a co-defendant or witness on this case or to forestall the administration of justice.”
Of their submitting, the attorneys of Mr. Floyd pointed to a few of Mr. Trump on Reality Social. One was made shortly after one other co-defendant, lawyer Sidney Powell, made a plea deal.
Written by Mr. Trump within the put up that Ms. Powell “is likely one of the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people that thought, and in ever-increasing numbers nonetheless assume, appropriately, that the 2020 Presidential Election is RIGGED & FIRED.” He additionally wrote that Ms. Powell “WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS,” contradicted considered one of his own social media posts from 2020.
Final week, federal prosecutors requested a Washington appeals courtroom to approve a gag order imposed on Mr. Trump in his federal election interference case, saying his “excessive historical past” of focusing on adversaries on social media usually carries real-world dangers.
The gag order was suspended this month by an appeals courtroom because it thought-about whether or not the trial choose presiding over the case, Tanya S. Chutkan, was justified in imposing it.
Final month, the choose presiding over the civil fraud trial of Mr. Trump in New York fined him $10,000 for violating a gag order within the case, after the previous president made feedback to reporters {that a} choose discovered constituted an assault on an worker. in courtroom.
