Is running for president a get-out-of-jail-free card?
Some experts are accusing the system of being unfair after one of the 19 co-defendants in the racketeering case that includes former president Donald Trump out of Fulton County, Georgia, may have his bail revoked.
A motion filed by District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday accuses Harrison Floyd of intimidating witnesses and co-defendants.
One of the people in Floyd's alleged path was election worker Ruby Freeman who on Jan. 4, 2021, who was told by Floyd that she “needed protection.” He leaned on her to make false statements about election fraud, according to the indictment.
The notion that Floyd might be incarcerated while Trump gets to stump around the country has some experts crying foul.
"Equal Treatment," asks former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann in a tweet. "Let's say you agree with the below motion to revoke Floyd's bail, how is it that the same motion has not been made as to defendant Donald J. Trump, who has engaged in at least as threatening conduct and indirect communications as that alleged against Floyd?"
Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman also pointed to the ginger handling of Trump compared to Floyd. "There's a secondary audience for this motion, and he's running to be President of the United States," he tweeted.
The itch of disparity with the law was echoed by @MuellerSheWrote, who tweeted: "Curious as to why there's grounds to revoke Harrison Floyd's bond in Fulton County, but not Donald Trump's."
Floyd has been publicly admonished for his efforts to discuss the case with a Trump's former attorney Jenna Ellis, who is also a co-defendant and witness and took a plea deal on Oct. 23 and is expected to cooperate with the prosecution.
"On November 6, 2023, the Defendant participated in a video-recorded and widely disseminated interview on the Conservative Daily [podcast]," according to the motion. "During the interview, the Defendant discussed the facts of case and communicated indirectly to codefendant and witness Jenna Ellis by discussing her guilty plea, in violation of conditions of release."
Floyd is on record saying: "President Trump was underserved by people like her. People who would go into the Oval Office and tell him one thing and then behind his back they would do another ... I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a Harvard J.D. But guess who is? Jenna Ellis, right. She literally, if she truly believed everything that she was saying, she could have defended her own self. She didn’t need a quarter of a million dollars of people's hard-earned money to be raised offline. You know? And it doesn’t take a quarter of a million dollars to accept a plea deal, either. Or to deny one. OK? So she just showed who she really is."
These comments were allegedly disseminated online by Floyd and also targeted possible witnesses in the trial, including former Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, tagging their Twitter accounts, the motion states.
Such behavior, according to the DA's office, "constitutes an act to intimidate known witnesses and direct communication with known witnesses about the facts of the case in violation of conditions of release."
