Former president Donald Trump’s bond set at 200,000 dollars in Georgia case

Donald Trump’s bond has been set at 200,000 US dollars (£157,000) in the Georgia case accusing the former president of scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss, according to court papers filed on Monday.

The bond agreement, outlined in a court filing signed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Mr Trump’s defence lawyers, also bars Mr Trump from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case — including on social media.

He is also prohibited from communicating “in any way, directly or indirectly” about the facts of the case with any co-defendant or witness, except through lawyers.

Mr Trump was charged last week in the case alongside 18 allies who prosecutors say conspired to subvert the will of voters in a desperate bid to keep the Republican in the White House after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing. He has been railing against the case since before he was indicted and singled out Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican who rebuffed his efforts to overturn the election, by name in a social media post as recently as Monday morning.

Ms Willis has already set a deadline of noon on Friday for all the defendants to turn themselves in at the Fulton County Jail to be booked. She has proposed that arraignments for the defendants happen the week of September 5 and that the case go to trial in March.

It is the fourth criminal case against the former president who is campaigning to reclaim the White House in 2024.

Members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team said in a court filing that Mr Trump’s lawyers last week had exaggerated the amount of material that they would need to sift through in order to be ready for trial.

In suggesting an April 2026 trial date, defence lawyers said they had been provided by prosecutors with 11.5 million pages of potential evidence to review.

But prosecutors said much of that includes duplicate pages or information that is already public, such as documents from the House committee that investigated the January 6 riot at the US Capitol as well as copies of Mr Trump’s social media posts.

“In cases such as this one, the burden of reviewing discovery cannot be measured by page count alone, and comparisons to the height of the Washington Monument and the length of a Tolstoy novel are neither helpful nor insightful; in fact, comparisons such as those are a distraction from the issue at hand — which is determining what is required to prepare for trial,” prosecutors wrote.

Mr Smith’s team has proposed a January 2, 2024 trial date.