Monday, August 28, 2023

In Georgia, the lone black male defendant in the Trump case rots in jail

Image: Harrison Floyd. GiveSendGo photograph.

If only Harrison Floyd’s first name were George. If only he’d been a convicted felon who passed a counterfeit bill, filled himself with illegal drugs, and resisted arrest If that were the case, he’d have had millions of dollars flowing to him from Hollywood and Democrat politicians, and he’d have been a media hero. However, Harrison Floyd isn’t a thug of color. Instead, he’s a retired Marine vet, living with his family and getting by on his pension. And he’s also a black Trump supporter, which is why he’s rotting in a Fulton County jail.

One of the important things to remember about all this Democrat criminal lawfare against anyone who dared support Donald Trump is that it’s intended to destroy them economically. A great lawyer can cost close to $1,000 per hour (although, if he’s decent, he’ll hand the work to young lawyers and paralegals who will cost $300-$400 an hour). A good lawyer will cost about $400 an hour. A mediocre lawyer will cost about $250 per hour.

What this means for a client is that even a single court appearance on a simple matter (preparing documents, travel time, time spent in the courtroom) can result in a $1,000 to $4,000 bill. On a single complicated motion, you’re looking at $25,000 to $100,000 in legal fees. (Maybe more; I haven’t worked on a big case in about 15 years.)

If you’re rich, you can probably absorb this for years. If you’re middle-class, you can absorb this for months before your savings are exhausted, and you are no longer middle-class. And if you’re poor, you can’t afford this at all. Moreover, the public interest lawyers who line up to represent the George Floyds of this world tend to be leftists. They’re not going to volunteer their services for someone who dared to support Trump.

One of those people who dared to support Trump is Harrison Floyd. He was the director of Black Voices for Trump, which is the scariest organization in America if you’re a Democrat. That’s because, while blacks thrived economically under Trump, Biden has been a disaster for them. His inflation has drained the middle class and left the poor even poorer—and that means that blacks have seen whatever wealth they accrued during the Trump years vanish. If a leading motivation for voting is the economy, blacks have had the Biden economy pounding them into the ground.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis isn’t the only one afraid of Floyd. Jack Smith is, too, which is why Floyd was one of those in the crosshairs of Jack Smith’s January 6 investigation. In that case, the FBI claimed that he “yelled at, pushed and struck an agent who was serving a subpoena at his Maryland home…” Floyd was charged with assaulting an FBI agent. Let me act the role of a Fox News debate moderator: Raise your hand if you trust the FBI’s version of events.

Thanks to his service in the Marine Corps, Floyd is disabled, so he and his family are dependent on his pension. And while Biden’s illegal aliens are getting floods of taxpayer money thrown at them, the same is not true for disabled veterans. What this means is that Floyd was unable to hire a lawyer to represent him when Fani Willis issued her indictments. He did, however, fly to Atlanta, where he turned himself in. Turning oneself in is not the hallmark of a flight risk.

Nevertheless, looking at a disabled former Marine who paid the airfare to turn himself in but is unable to afford a lawyer, Judge Emily Richardson* did what judges do to Trump supporters, especially black ones—she reamed him:

Floyd represented himself and was the only one of the case’s 19 defendants not to organize a bond agreement with state prosecutors before turning himself in.

He told Judge Emily Richardson that legal counsel was too expensive, costing between $40,000 and $100,000.

“I can’t put my family in that kind of debt,” he said.

Richardson cited the open case as a reason to remand him to jail, and called him a flight risk. She said the final determination on whether he will receive bail is up to the judge who will handle his trial.

“I do find that based on the open charge against you there are grounds for bond to be denied at this point,” Richardson said. “So I’m going to go ahead and find that you are at risk to commit additional felonies and a potential risk to flee the jurisdiction.”

Fortunately, Trump supporters have Floyd’s back. They learned that legal counsel has stepped forward to defend Floyd and created a GiveSendGo to help with his legal fees. Within 24 hours, that fund had met the original $100,000 goal. Now, the fund has raised the goal to $200,000. This isn’t greed. Given the Democrat goal of breaking people economically with lawfare, in a case of this magnitude, the money can easily be gone in two months.

I’ve donated my mite, and I feel quite good about having done so. What’s happening to the defendants—a former president, along with his lawyers and his supporters—should shock the conscience of every American. Their lives are being destroyed for daring to question an election, something that’s a time-honored Democrat pastime and, importantly, that’s a hallmark of a free country. We all need to step up and make our voices heard…and money talks.

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*I’m aware that Judge Richardson was appointed by former Republican governor Nathan Deal. As we’ve seen, though, the Republican political class in Georgia hates Trump. Sundance explains whats going on there. I do not have evidence that Judge Richardson is a part of this political class or that she shares its values, but it would explain her thinking. Additionally, she was a long-time prosecutor, which may be enough to explain her decision to accept the prosecution’s view of the matter.