Judge Scott McAfee (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool, File), Harrison Floyd (Fulton County Jail mug shot)
After the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office brought one Georgia election racketeering (RICO) defendant’s recent social media posts to his attention, the trial judge declined to immediately jail the Black Voices for Trump activist and former Marine charged in the case.
“It’s very clear to me that this bond needs to be modified,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said toward the end of the nearly three-hour hearing on Tuesday. The judge ordered District Attorney Fani Willis to propose modifications to the conditions of Floyd’s pre-trial release that would address his social media posts that appeared to target potential witnesses in the RICO case in which he is a co-defendant of the former president.
The first word from Floyd’s defense lawyers was spent on urging McAfee to take note of the “spirit of the bond order” and not to jail their client for posts he never intended to use as a means of witness intimidation.
“I don’t believe that he should be remanded back into the custody of the state. There’s no need for that,” said Floyd attorney John E. Morrison. “One of the things that bothers me, if these tweets had so angered or bothered the state, they would have picked up the phone call and called the defense team of my client and said ‘Hey listen, he’s making tweets. We don’t like them. Can you do something about them?””
Instead of alerting the defense to the social media posts, prosecutors immediately filed a bond revocation motion, the defense said. That rush to jail, Floyd’s defense asserted, only highlighted the weakness of the prosecution’s case.
“My client is showing just how weak the case against him is. And I think he has a right to do that,” Morrison continued. “This is political speech, your honor, and they’re trying to silence it.”
The defense then attempted to argue that the state had not verified that Floyd posted on X since the cited account didn’t have a blue checkmark.
At the start of his case, Floyd was the only one among 19 defendants including former President Donald Trump to be jailed for days after their post-indictment surrenders.
Last week, Willis, a Democrat, argued in a motion that Floyd, a former professional MMA fighter who also faces federal a case for allegedly assaulting a federal officer in May, should have his bond revoked for “numerous intentional and flagrant violations of the conditions of release.”
Floyd engaged in a “pattern of intimidation toward known codefendants and witnesses” in the series of social media posts, Willis argued. Those posts constituted “direct and indirect communication about the facts of this case to known codefendants and witnesses, and obstruction of the administration of justice in direct violation of this Court’s order,” the DA added.
In her motion, the DA included several screenshots of Floyd’s recent posts on X, some of which tagged witnesses Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), the office’s COO Gabriel Sterling (R), and mentioned Ruby Freeman, a 2020 Georgia election worker baselessly accused by Trump and top allies of fraud.
Floyd tagged former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis in a post that caught Willis’ attention as well.
In that post, Harrison Floyd accused Ellis, who pleaded guilty to a felony on Oct. 24 in the Georgia prosecution, of lying in her leaked proffer session, when she recalled an alleged conversation with Trump White House aide Dan Scavino at a post-2020 election Christmas Party. Scavino, according to Ellis, said that “the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.”
A Nov. 6 Floyd interview on the Conservative Daily podcast also amounted to impermissible discussion about the facts of the case and “indirect” communication to “codefendant and witness Jenna Ellis” in violation of bond conditions, the DA argued.
What Floyd said on the podcast, according to DA’s motion:
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.
During the Tuesday hearing, Floyd attorney Morrison asked Fulton County assistant chief investigator Michael Hill if any of the witnesses felt intimidated by his client’s posts.
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“That’s how witness Jenna Ellis felt by virtue of Mr. Floyd’s communications to her,” Hill said.
Morrison asked if Ellis herself reached out to report that she felt intimidated or harassed by Floyd. The witness said Ellis did not, but that she confirmed how she felt when Hill asked her about the Floyd posts.
Hill said that he could not get into the mind of Floyd to know what exactly he intended with the posts on X, but that they nonetheless constituted communications to known witnesses or co-defendants.
Asked by Morrison if Floyd threatened violence in the posts, Hill said no.
“No, I wouldn’t say any of his direct comments contained any threats of violence,” the witness said.
Just before 3 p.m., Gabriel Sterling was called as a witness by the state. Sterling said that he saw the Floyd posts on X tagging him and the secretary of state.
“Do you enjoy being called a piece of fecal matter?” Willis asked.
“No, ma’am,” Sterling replied.
Floyd attorney Chris Kachouroff picked up the questioning by immediately asking the witness, “Mr. Sterling, you’re not a fan of Donald Trump, are you?” — asserting that Sterling was biased against Floyd, a Trump supporter.
Kachouroff then shifted to a similar line of questioning as Morrison.
“These posts aren’t threatening to you — they may not be nice — but they’re not threatening and intimidating to you, are they?” Kachouroff asked.
“It’s par for the course when you’re a public figure,” Sterling answered, saying when he’s tagged in posts like these he tends to look.
“If you were threatened or intimidated would you contact law enforcement?” the defense attorney asked.
“If I thought something rose to that level, I would contact law enforcement,” Sterling said.
“And you didn’t contact law enforcement in this case?” Kachouroff followed up.
“No, sir,” Sterling confirmed.
“Your honor, I have nothing further,” Kachouroff said, just before a brief break in the proceedings.
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