Unsafe. Unsanitary. Teeming with insects.
When former US president Donald Trump surrenders today to face charges he tried to overturn the 2020 US presidential election he is expected to do so at an Atlanta jail where conditions are so notorious that they are under investigation by the US Department of Justice.
The 77-year-old former president and the 18 codefendants in the election racketeering case are to be booked at the Fulton County Jail, also known as the Rice Street Jail, the sheriff’s office said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Standard booking procedure is for a defendant to be fingerprinted and to have a mugshot taken before they are released on bond — which has already been set at US$200,000 in Trump’s case.
Trump did not have to undergo the indignity of having a mugshot taken during his three previous arrests this year: in New York on charges of paying hush money to a porn star, in Florida for mishandling top secret government documents and in Washington on charges of conspiring to upend his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
However, Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat told reporters this month that when it comes to a booking at his jail, “it doesn’t matter your status.”
“We have a mug shot ready for you,” Labat said.
Trump, the frontrunner for next year’s Republican presidential nomination and the other codefendants have until noon tomorrow to surrender voluntarily to the charges they conspired to overturn the billionaire’s election loss to Biden in Georgia.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that he would be going to Atlanta today to be arrested, but did not give a time.
In a fundraising appeal, he said it would take place at a jail “which has been described as a ‘humanitarian crisis’” where “guards have collected over 1,000 shanks fashioned from the crumbling walls.”
Two codefendants in the racketeering case, Trump attorney John Eastman and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, were booked at the Fulton County Jail on Tuesday and released on bond.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has set up a tight security perimeter around the facility, closing streets and restricting access.
“When Former President Trump surrenders: there will be a hard lockdown of the area surrounding the Rice Street Jail, meaning no ingress or egress during that time,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
The justice department opened a probe last year into conditions at the Fulton County Jail, where a number of detainees have died in recent years.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said it was being launched “based on serious allegations of unsafe, unsanitary living conditions at the jail.”
“Recent allegations of filthy housing teeming with insects, rampant violence resulting in death and injuries and officers using excessive force are cause for grave concern and warrant a thorough investigation,” US Attorney Ryan Buchanan said.
The jail currently houses more than 2,500 inmates, double the amount it was originally designed to hold in 1989, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.
Fifteen inmates died at the jail last year, the newspaper said, and there have been four deaths reported in the past five weeks alone.
Fulton County recently approved a US$4 million settlement with the family of a 35-year-old man with mental health problems who was found dead in his cell covered in lice and bedbugs.
Following his booking, Trump would be subject to a court arraignment where he would be formally charged and enter a plea.
Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, can decide whether Trump needs to appear in person at the arraignment or whether he can appear virtually.
Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who brought the case, has asked for the arraignments to take place during the week of Sept. 5 and for the trial to begin on March 4 next year.
Others facing racketeering charges in the alleged Georgia conspiracy include Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS