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ATLANTA – Former President Donald Trump’s final co-defendant in the Fulton County, Georgia election interference case posted a bail agreement Tuesday after spending the weekend in jail.
Harrison William Prescott Floyd, who is accused of molesting an Atlanta-area poll worker in the weeks following the 2020 election, posted $100,000 bail on Tuesday.
Jail records showed Floyd was still in custody after 5 p.m. Tuesday and it was not clear when he would be released.
Unlike the other defendants in the case, Floyd did not initially hire an attorney or contact District Attorney Fani T. Willis’ office to negotiate a bail agreement before surrendering in the county jail Thursday. As a result, he was held in jail for five nights – until Supreme Court Justice Scott McAfee ordered a public defender to take up Floyd’s case to secure a bail agreement to break him out of jail.
Floyd broadcast his surrender live while in prison and was forced by police officers to interrupt the broadcast as he entered the building.
Floyd had already been evaluated by the Georgia Public Defender Counsel and was not hired as a client – a sign that he may not have been financially qualified to defend in an emergency situation. McAfee wrote in its order that Floyd could be held liable to public defender for a refund.
Since then, however, Floyd has been represented by a resident attorney, Todd Harding. Two other law firms, Dominion Law Group and the Law Offices of Brandon A. Thomas, are conducting crowdsourced online fundraisers for Floyd, which have raised approximately $300,000 so far. None responded to requests for comment.
Floyd, 39, also known as Willie Lewis Floyd III, is a little-known player who helped organize Trump’s 2020 campaign campaign for black voters. An online member profile and question-and-answer session published by the University Club of Washington in November 2021 describes him as a US Marine Corps veteran whose duties have included jobs as a machine gunner, combat rifle instructor, and martial arts instructor, among others.
Floyd was charged earlier this year with assaulting an FBI agent working on the Justice Department’s parallel investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Agents went to Floyd’s home in Rockville, Maryland on Feb. 23 to serve a grand jury subpoena, according to an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. The agents delivered the subpoena as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts by Trump and his supporters to reverse the 2020 election results, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the to describe the investigation. The subpoena required Floyd to appear before a federal grand jury in Washington.
In the affidavit, Floyd is accused of beating up an agent and hurling profanity at him and his colleague.
“WHO the f— do you think you are,” Floyd reportedly shouted while standing “chest to chest” with an agent after pushing him backwards with his body.
In Georgia, Floyd faces charges of racketeering, conspiracy to produce false testimony and tampering with witnesses. The charges stem from his alleged efforts, along with a professional publicist and a preacher, to pressure a local poll worker, Ruby Freeman, into falsely confessing to campaign crimes she did not commit. Freeman was the target of repeated lies from Trump and his supporters in the days and weeks following the 2020 election. The former president mentioned her 18 times in a phone call with Georgia’s Foreign Minister Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, once calling her a “professional election fraudster and agitator”.
In 2019 and 2020, Floyd ran the Trump campaign’s Black Voices for Trump campaign, trying to rally support for the then-president’s re-election. Floyd announced a run for Congress in Georgia in 2019 but dropped out of the running within weeks. An ad for his short-lived campaign included images of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) before showing footage of Floyd firing a gun.
Floyd’s bail agreement in Georgia came about as a handful of other co-defendants filed September 6 requests to waive their scheduled indictment hearings.
Former Trump campaign attorneys Ray Smith and Sidney Powell, as well as publicist Trevian Kutti, charged with her role in the alleged pressure campaign against Freeman, have all written pleas of not guilty.
Powell and former Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro have also made requests for a speedy trial in the Georgia case. Last week, McAfee set an October 23 trial date for Chesebro. On Tuesday, Willis and her team of prosecutors attempted to clarify with McAfee whether the judge’s decision on Chesebro’s trial plan meant he had formally separated his case from the other 18 defendants.
In a filing on Tuesday, Willis reiterated that she plans to try all 19 people accused in the case together, beginning Oct. 23, and asked McAfee to set deadlines for attorneys to file notices when they try the cases to “separate” their clients from Chesebros.
“The state maintains its position that settlement at this time is inadequate and that all defendants should be tried together, but at the very least the court should determine the trial of defendant Powell and any other defendant who may request a speedy trial.” .” same date as Defendant Chesebro,” read the motion signed by Willis and Assistant District Attorney Will Wooten.
