Georgia election indictment: Trump to surrender
Former President Donald Trump is expected to surrender in Fulton County after being indicted on RICO charges accused of trying to change the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. FOX 5 Atlanta has team coverage.
ATLANTA – A Donald Trump supporter who surrendered to Georgia authorities Thursday on charges he conspired with the former president and other allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss is also facing federal charges that he assaulted an FBI agent in Maryland.
Harrison William Prescott Floyd turned himself in to the Fulton County jail in Atlanta a week after being indicted in the Georgia case alongside Trump and 17 others.
Harrison Floyd (Fulton County Sheriffs Office)
LIVE UPDATES: TRUMP TO SURRENDER AT FULTON COUNTY JAIL
Court records show Floyd, identified as a former U.S. Marine who’s active with the group Black Voices for Trump, was also arrested three months ago in Maryland on a federal warrant that accuses him of aggressively confronting two FBI agents sent to serve him with a grand jury subpoena.
An agent’s affidavit filed in U.S. District Court says Floyd screamed, cursed and jabbed a finger in one FBI agent’s face and twice chest-bumped the agent in a stairwell. It says Floyd backed down only when the second agent opened his suit coat to reveal his holstered gun.
The records don’t disclose the purpose of the grand jury seeking Floyd’s testimony. But he was served during the months that special counsel Jack Smith was calling witnesses before the federal grand jury that indicted Trump on Aug. 1 for trying to overturn his election loss.
On the heels of Floyd’s May arrest in Maryland on a charge of simple assault against a federal officer, Floyd got swept up in the sprawling Georgia case in which Trump and numerous allies are charged with trying to undo the former president’s 2020 election loss in the state.
Court records do not list an attorney for Floyd in the Georgia case. Jail records show he was being held with no bond, unlike other defendants in the case who had attorneys negotiate bonds with a judge before their surrender.
Floyd’s attorney in the federal case in Maryland, Carlos J.R. Salvado, did not immediately return phone and email messages from The Associated Press. Federal court records show Floyd had his first appearance May 15, in which the judge set conditions for his pretrial release. He later surrendered his passport.
The Aug. 14 indictment in Fulton County charges Floyd with violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, conspiring to commit false statements and illegally influencing a witness.
TIt says the charges stem from harassment of Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump. Floyd took part in a Jan. 4, 2020, conversation in which Freeman was told she “needed protection” and was pressured to make false statements about election fraud, the indictment says.
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Crowd of Trump supporters grows at jail
Approximately 100 supporters of former President Donald Trump are gathered at the jail in Fulton County
In the Maryland case, the agents first reached Floyd by phone as they stood outside his apartment building in Rockville, over 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Washington, according to court records. The agents told Floyd they had a subpoena to serve him, and Floyd told them he wasn’t home.
When Floyd returned home with his daughter, he brushed past the agents without taking the subpoena being held out to him, according to a May 3 affidavit by FBI agent Dennis McGrail. It says the agents followed Floyd inside the building and up several flights of stairs.
“Bro, I don’t even know who you are,” Floyd told the agents, according to McGrail’s affidavit, which says the agents made an audio recording of the encounter. “You’re two random guys who are following me up here, into my house, with my daughter. You’re not showing me a (expletive) badge, you haven’t shown me (expletive). Get the (expletive) away from me.”
As Floyd slammed his apartment door shut, one of the agents wedged the subpoena between the door and its frame, the affidavit says.
The agents were heading down the stairs when they saw Floyd rushing toward them, screaming expletives, the affidavit says.
Floyd ran into one of the agents in the stairwell, “striking him chest to chest” and knocking him backward, the affidavit says. Then he chest-bumped the same agent again, ignoring commands to back away. Instead, Floyd began jabbing a finger in the agent’s face as he kept screaming.
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The affidavit says Floyd only backed down when the second agent showed Floyd his badge and holstered gun.
Floyd returned to his apartment and called 911 to report that two men had threatened him at his home, one of them armed with a gun.
“They were lucky I didn’t have a gun on me, because I would have shot his (expletive) ass,” Floyd told a dispatcher, according to the FBI agent’s affidavit.
Floyd told Rockville police officers dispatched to his apartment that he didn’t know who the men were. He told them his mother-in-law had called earlier in the day saying two men showed up at her home wanting to talk with him. The affidavit says he showed the officers a text message his mother-in-law had sent of the men’s business cards, which identified them as FBI agents.
