ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia prosecutor pursuing a case against former President Donald Trump and others on Wednesday asked a judge to revoke the bond of defendant Harrison Floyd, saying he has been intimidating witnesses and codefendants in the case.
Floyd, Trump and 17 others were indicted in August by a Fulton County grand jury, accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching a deal with prosecutors and the rest have pleaded not guilty.
The charges against Floyd stem from allegations of harassment of Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump and his supporters. Floyd took part in a Jan. 4, 2021, conversation in which Freeman was told she “needed protection” and was pressured to make false statements about election fraud, the indictment says.
Prosecutors said in Wednesday's motion to revoke his bond that he had been posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, “in an effort to intimidate codefendants and witnesses, to communicate directly and indirectly with codefendants and witnesses, and to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.” His actions amounted to “intentional and flagrant violations” of his bond conditions, prosecutors wrote.
Chris Kachouroff, an attorney for Floyd, said District Attorney Fani Willis' attempt to revoke his client's bond was nonsense, adding, “She's not going to get it granted." He said he plans to file a motion to disqualify Willis from the prosecution “because of her personal animus against my client.”
Floyd was the only one of the 19 defendants in the case to spend time behind bars at the Fulton County Jail in August. While the other defendants in the case had their lawyers reach out to prosecutors for a bond agreement before turning themselves in at the jail, Floyd showed up on Aug. 24 without a lawyer or a bond agreement. He was released Aug. 30 after his lawyer negotiated a $100,000 bond.
The conditions of his release include not communicating directly or indirectly about the facts of the case with any of his codefendants or any known witnesses.
Prosecutors say he repeatedly attacked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and one of his top aides, Gabriel Sterling, who are both likely witnesses in the case. In one social media post they cited, he seemed to imply that the two men had interfered in elections, lied before Congress and lied to Willis.
In a Nov. 6 interview on a podcast, he discussed the facts of the case and “communicated indirectly” to codefendant Jenna Ellis, by discussing her guilty plea, prosecutors wrote. After the details from a video of an interview Ellis did with prosecutors as part of her plea deal were reported by news outlets earlier this week, prosecutors cited a post in which Floyd called her “a whole mess” and accused her of lying about another potential witness in the case.
He also had a series of posts Tuesday about Freeman that prosecutors said was an attempt to intimidate her and indirectly communicate with her about the facts of the case.
Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, were vilified and harassed by Trump supporters after lawyers for the then-president played surveillance video footage from the arena during a meeting of Georgia state lawmakers in December 2020. State and federal officials investigated and found no evidence of election fraud at the arena.
Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a pastor from Illinois, went to Freeman’s home in December 2020. He intended to claim to be offering her help in order to get her to make false statements about what happened at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where ballots were being tallied, the indictment says.
After Lee failed to connect with Freeman at her house, he sought help from Floyd, a leader in the organization Black Voices for Trump, telling Floyd that Freeman was afraid to talk to him because he was a white man, the indictment says. Floyd solicited the help of Trevian Kutti, who had worked as a spokesperson for R. Kelly and Kanye West. She traveled to Atlanta from Chicago in early January 2021 to try to connect with Freeman.
Kutti arranged to meet Freeman at a suburban police precinct and they spoke for about an hour, with Floyd joining the meeting by phone. Kutti and Floyd told Freeman that she needed protection and that they could help her, but in reality they were trying to influence her testimony and get her to lie about what happened at State Farm Arena as votes were being counted, the indictment says.
In addition to the charges in Georgia, Floyd also faces federal charges that accuse him of aggressively confronting two FBI agents sent to serve him with a grand jury subpoena.
Kate Brumback, The Associated Press
