Georgia Rico case: John Eastman surrenders to authorities

Two people accused of conspiring with ex-President Donald Trump in the state of Georgia have turned themselves in to face charges of election interference.

John Eastman, one of 19 co-defendants named in the Georgia indictment, faces nine counts of racketeering and conspiracy.

Another defendant – Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman – has also surrendered to local officials.

Mr Trump is expected to surrender on Thursday on the 13 charges against him.

The Fulton County district attorney’s office last week charged the former president and 18 allies with attempting to overturn his electoral defeat in the closely-contested state in 2020.

Prosecutors have set a deadline of Friday noon local time for each defendant to surrender and be booked into the local Rice Street jail.

Prosecutors consider Mr Eastman, 63, a key figure in the plot to meddle with the 2020 election results.

The California law professor represented the former president in a lawsuit trying to overturn election results in four states he lost in 2020.

In Georgia, he is alleged to be part of a plot to urge state senators to disregard the election results and appoint fake electors.

He has reached a $100,000 bond agreement with the Fulton County district attorney’s office.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Eastman claimed that the Georgia case “targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide”.

He promised to “vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named”.

Mr Eastman’s post-election actions are currently the focus of disciplinary proceedings by the State Bar of California and could see him lose his law license there. Hearings set for this week were delayed ahead of his surrender in Fulton County.

He is also referenced, but not named, in a separate federal indictment on election subversion charges filed this month by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Hall became the first defendant in the Georgia case to turn himself in.

The bail bondsman from Atlanta faces seven charges related to his alleged involvement in a voting systems breach in Coffee County in January 2021.

Having signed a $10,000 bond agreement, he was released on Tuesday after spending roughly an hour at the jail.

Other defendants, including alleged fake electors Shawn Still and David Shafer, have also negotiated bond agreements through their lawyers.

The Georgia case is the latest in a series of criminal cases filed against Mr Trump.

Prosecutors in Fulton County accuse him of scheming to subvert the will of the state’s electorate following his narrow loss there to Democrat Joe Biden.

Mr Trump has agreed to a $200,000 (£157,000) bond as well as other release conditions, such as being barred from using social media to directly or indirectly threaten alleged co-conspirators or potential witnesses.

In a Monday night post on his Truth Social platform, the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential election reiterated his claim that the case was “all about ELECTION INTERFERENCE”.

The ex-president also faces 78 charges across three other criminal cases, including an investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.