Washington — Two of the 19 people charged in Georgia for alleged efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election turned themselves in to authorities on Thursday, becoming the first of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants to surrender.
Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, and John Eastman, a conservative attorney, were booked on Tuesday, Fulton County inmate records show.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis gave those charged until noon Friday to surrender to authorities. Trump, who has yet to enter a plea but has denied all wrongdoing, said Monday night that he will turn himself in on Thursday.
A Fulton County grand jury returned a 41-count indictment last week. The charging document accuses Trump and 18 others of participating in a “criminal enterprise” that aimed to reverse the former president’s electoral loss in Georgia.
Hall is accused of participating in a scheme to access election equipment and voter data in Coffee County, Georgia. He is charged with seven counts, and his bond was set at $10,000 — a $4,000 bond for Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, and a $1,000 bond for each of the remaining six conspiracy counts, according to a consent bond order.
The indictment claims Eastman played a key role in the alleged plot to send a fake slate of electors to Congress, which the indictment says was intended to “disrupt and delay the joint session of Congress” on Jan. 6, 2021, in order to alter the outcome of the 2020 election. The indictment claims Eastman sent an email suggesting “that the Trump presidential elector nominees in Georgia needed to meet on December 14, 2020, sign six sets of certificates of vote, and mail them ‘to the President of the Senate and to other officials.'”
Eastman, who has been charged with nine counts, had his bond set at $100,000, which included a $20,000 bond for violation of Georgia’s RICO statute and $10,000 each for the other eight counts. Eastman said in a statement that he and his legal team plan to contest the charges and said he is confident he will be “fully vindicated.”
“Each Defendant in this indictment, no less than any other American citizen, is entitled to rely upon the advice of counsel and the benefit of past legal precedent in challenging what former Vice President Pence described as, ‘serious allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law’ in the 2020 election,” he said. “The attempt to criminalize our rights to such redress with this indictment will have – and is already having — profound consequences for our system of justice.”