Georgia judge considers revoking bail for Trump co-defendant Harrison Floyd

Atlanta prosecutors will ask a judge Tuesday to revoke bail for Harrison Floyd, who was charged along with former President Donald J. Trump in the Georgia election interference case. The prosecutor in the case filed a motion last week accusing Mr. Floyd of intimidating potential witnesses through his social media posts.

Mr. Floyd’s lawyers argued in a new filing that the messages were not intimidating. In addition, they noted that Mr. Trump himself had posted provocative messages about the matter on social media and that no action had been taken against him. This, they say, makes “the state’s decision to go after Harrison Floyd difficult to justify.”

Both sides are expected to argue the case before Presiding Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. Floyd, the former leader of a group called Black Voices for Trump, was paid by the 2020 Trump campaign and is among 19 people, including the former president, who have been named as defendants in an indictment of racketeering of 97 pages in August. . The indictment accuses Mr. Trump and his co-defendants of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Four of the defendants pleaded guilty and promised to cooperate with prosecutors.

In addition to a state racketeering charge, Mr. Floyd faces two other counts in this case, for his role in what the indictment describes as a scheme to intimidate Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker, and pressuring her to falsely claim she had committed voter fraud.

In her motion last week, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani T. Willis said Mr. Floyd directed hostile social media posts toward Ms. Freeman and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, among others. , “in an effort to intimidate co-defendants and witnesses.

In one example cited in the motion, Mr. Floyd suggested that Jenna Ellis, a co-defendant who pleaded guilty last month, had lied in a later statement to prosecutors, calling her “a whole mess.”

“Does this sound like Ruby Freeman is under PRESSURE? » he wrote in another recent jobwith an audio clip of Ms. Freeman that was recorded on a police body camera in 2020.

Mr. Floyd’s lawyers called the attempt to revoke his bail a “retaliatory measure,” in part because Mr. Floyd recently refused a plea deal offered by the state. They also argued in their filing that directing comments to another user on next to a crowded Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the middle of a stadium.” of an Atlanta Falcons football game.

A ruling against Mr. Floyd could have repercussions for Mr. Trump, who is embroiled in battles over silence orders in other civil and criminal cases against him. Mr. Trump’s bail agreement in Georgia specifies that he “will not do any act,” including posting on social media, “to intimidate any person he knows to be a co-defendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.”

In their filing, Mr. Floyd’s lawyers highlighted some of Mr. Trump’s posts on Truth Social. One was made shortly after another co-defendant, attorney Sidney Powell, reached a plea deal.

Mr. Trump wrote in his message that Ms. Powell “was one of millions and millions of people who believed, and who, in ever-increasing numbers, rightly still believe, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen.” He also wrote that Ms. Powell “WAS NOT MY LAWYER AND NEVER HAS BEEN,” contradicting one of his own social media posts from 2020.

Federal prosecutors last week asked a Washington appeals court to approve a silence order imposed on Mr. Trump in his federal election interference case, saying his “long history” of targeting Adversaries on social media often led to dangers in the real world.

The silence order was suspended this month by the appeals court as it considered whether the trial judge presiding over the case, Tanya S. Chutkan, had the right to impose it.

Last month, the judge presiding over Mr. Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York fined him $10,000 for violating a silence order in the case, after the former president made comments to journalists that the judge considered an attack on a court employee.