On Monday, former President Donald Trump agreed to a $200,000 bond in the Georgia criminal case examining his effort to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results.
Bond agreements for some of the 18 other co-defendants in the case also began to trickle in on Monday afternoon, including for three attorneys who are accused of helping mastermind former President Donald Trump’s fake elector strategy: John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, and Ray Smith.
Eastman and Chesebro agreed to a $100,000 bond each, while Smith’s bond was set at $50,000, according to court filings
What You Need To Know
- Three attorneys who are accused of helping mastermind former President Donald Trump’s fake elector strategy in Georgia agreed to bonds set by a judge on Monday: John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, and Ray Smith
- The agreement, signed by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, require all defendants to report to pretrial supervision every 30 days, not communicate with witnesses or his fellow co-defendants except through counsel, and not intimidate co-defendants or witnesses.
- A well-credentialed and once-respected conservative legal mind, Eastman is charged with soliciting Georgia officials and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to assist in a plot to create a new slate of electors to represent Georgia in the 2020 Electoral College process
- All three attorneys were hit with conspiracy charges for attempting to file the fraudulent documents with Georgia courts and forging other documents to present them as official representations of Georgia’s “duly elected and qualified presidential electors”
- On Monday, Trump also agreed to a $200,000 bond in the Georgia criminal case
The agreements, signed by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, require all defendants to report to pretrial supervision every 30 days, not communicate with witnesses or his fellow co-defendants except through counsel, and not intimidate co-defendants or witnesses.
In an email, Eastman’s attorney Harvey Silverglate confirmed the terms of the bond release and wrote that Eastman plans to go to trial and will not seek any plea deals.
Attorneys for Chesebro and Smith could not be immediately reached for comment.
Eastman faces one charge of criminal solicitation, six charges of criminal conspiracy, one charge of filing false documents and one charge of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the last of which all 19 co-defendants are charged with. Chesebro also faces six criminal conspiracy charges. Beyond the RICO violation, Smith has been charged with three counts of criminal solicitation, six criminal conspiracy counts, and two counts of making false statements to Georgia’s state legislature.
A well-credentialed and once-respected conservative legal mind, Eastman is charged with soliciting Georgia officials and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to assist in a plot to create a new slate of electors to represent Georgia in the 2020 Electoral College process, a scheme prosecutors allege Chesebro helped lay the legal groundwork for in key states across the country.
Smith was also charged with soliciting Georgia officials to violate their oaths of office by helping the plot and making false statements to Georgia lawmakers to convince them of election conspiracies.
Chesebro is alleged to have distributed documents to Trump allies and state-level Republican Party officials for fake electors to use to cast electoral votes for Trump “despite the fact that Donald John Trump lost the November 3, 2020, presidential election” in the states the campaign targeted, according to the indictment.
All three attorneys were hit with conspiracy charges for attempting to file the fraudulent documents with Georgia courts and forging other documents to present them as official representations of Georgia’s “duly elected and qualified presidential electors.”
The goal, prosecutors said, would be to illegally replace the electors assigned to vote for Joe Biden, who won the presidential election in the state, with a fake slate that would vote for Trump and hand his campaign Georgia’s Electoral College votes, as well as those from other states.
Eastman also urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to overrule Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Instead, Pence consulted a prominent conservative movement figure and longtime federal judge, J. Michael Luttig, and ultimately agreed with his assessment that the office of the vice president did not have that authority.
Eastman is a former clerk of Luttig’s, who referred to the attorney as a “brilliant constitutional scholar” until he participated in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Also on Monday, Atlanta-area bail bondsman Scott Hall agreed to a $10,000 bond, according to a court record. He is being charged for his alleged involvement in seizing voting information from Dominion Voting Systems in a small, southern Georgia county. Dominion Voting Systems was at the center of many right-wing conspiracies connected to the 2020 presidential election and settled a lawsuit with Fox News in April for $787.5 million after alleging the network defamed the company by promoting lies about Dominion and the election.
Attorneys for Hall could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
