Trump criminally charged for the fourth time in four months

Yesterday evening (24 August 2023) Donald Trump made a speedy fly-in visit to Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, following an indictment by District Attorney Fani Willis for trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr Trump was swiftly released after he paid the $200,000 bail bond that his lawyer had negotiated with Fani Willis earlier this week. Trump paying his bail is also the first time that the former US president has had to fund his freedom in the run-up to his pending trials.

Willis has requested that the trials against Trump start on 23 October, but it is highly expected that the Republican will argue for a later start date.

Speaking of Trump's urge to push the trials back, Willis said: "I am not granting any extensions. I gave 2 weeks for people to surrender themselves to the court. Your client is no different than any other criminal defendant in this jurisdiction. The two weeks was a tremendous courtesy."

Before boarding his flight from Atlanta's airport, Trump spoke to reporters about his arrest.

Trump declared: "What has taken place here is a travesty of justice. We did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong, and everybody knows that. What they're doing is election interference."

Speaking of the charges against him that relate to encouraging a group of Republicans to storm The Capital, Trump added: "We did nothing wrong at all, and we have every right, every single right, to challenge an election that we think is dishonest."

Steve Sadow, a Veteran Atlanta Criminal Defence Lawyer, was hired by Trump to represent him in court only moments after his arrest.

Sadow claimed in a statement that Trump "is innocent of all the charges brought against him" and added that "prosecutions intended to advance or serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the president have no place in our justice system".

The case against Trump stems from a taped phone call between the former president and the state's election chief, Brad Raffensperger, on 2 January 2021. During the telephone conversation, Trump allegedly asked Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes – one more than Biden's margin of victory.

The former president of the United States refused to answer any questions from the media.

While inside Fulton County, Trump had his mugshots taken – which he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, only an hour after his arrest.

Trump is the first-ever former US president to be charged with criminal offences and is currently facing 91 charges across the four indictments for his alleged actions before, during and after his Presidency that ended at the start of 2021.

Trump's recent arrest marks the fourth time that he has been criminally charged in four months, with the former Republican leader already being forced to appear in multiple criminal trials in 2024.

It has also been reported that the 77-year-old could face years in prison if he is convicted of any of the cases against him, with National Security Lawyer Kel McClanahan revealing that the Justice Department will most likely "want to go for incarceration".

Despite his backlog of charges, Trump remains the leading contender for the Republican party's presidential nomination and is set to run against the Democratic and current president, Joe Biden.

Trump has repeatedly denied any allegations against him while penalising the judges who have been randomly nominated to oversee his upcoming trials.

As part of his release from Fulton County Jail, Trump reassured the authorities that he would not threaten or intimidate any witnesses in person and on social media platforms.

It has also been documented that if Trump were to have overturned the Georgia result, the overall national conclusion would not have changed.

Despite Trump contesting the voting outcome in the seven states that he narrowly lost to Biden, not one of the seven states has reversed its conclusion that Biden legitimately won its electoral votes.