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the county jail is now center stage for one of the most high-profile legal battles in history. law enforcement on high alert across atlanta because hours from now former president donald trump is surrendering. the former president will leave his new jersey golf club for the fulton county, georgia jail where he'll be booked on charges that include conspiracy and racketeering. and in a last-minute shake-up trump replaced his top georgia defense lawyer. we're following all of those details, jim. >> we are also outside the jail, where trump supporters and protesters have begun to gather along with an increased police presence. and we've learned that security has ramped up at the prosecutor's offices as well. we'll have more on those precautions. but first, cnn's katelyn polantz has some breaking news on a potential trial date for trump and his co-defendants. katelyn, what do we know? >> reporter: we just saw a filing from the district

attorney here asking for an october 23rd trial date. a special request that they're putting into the court just today. because one of the defendants in this case, ken cheseboro, he had said that he wanted a speedy trial. that would have put things around november. but now the d.a.'s office is coming into court and they want to move fast. quite clearly. that would be a very aggressive timeline but one that they seem to be prepared to argue would be within reason for them at least to get to trial for these 19 defendants. now, of course trial dates move, even once they're set by a judge, and there's a lot of things that would go into the questions on whether the trial would actually happen at that date if it were to be set that fast. it's a really sprawling case with 19 defendants. a lot of arguments to be made. potentially a really aggressive jury selection that would take a lot of time to get through. and so all of this remains to be seen how it would play out. but they are asking for october. right now that's what's on the

books in court. also today we are getting additional information about mark meadows. he just reached his bond agreement and has agreed to turn himself in to self-surrender to jail as one of the defendants in this case by noon tomorrow. his bond agreement is $100,000, a six-figure agreement like others who were top attorneys and other advisers around donald trump after the election. now we're waiting for meadows to turn himself in. the former white house chief of staff to be arrested here in fulton county as well as donald trump. and all of this is underneath, an overlay of there being a hearing monday about this case too. there are so many moving parts. a lot of news coming at us. there will be more developments this afternoon, i'm sure. >> as you say, former president, former white house chief of staff arrested. they're going to be arrested. as you know, meadows tried to head off this responsibility to surrender. he lost that case in court. but his role in this is central

going forward given he was present for some of the most telling moments including that phone call of trump to georgia officials attempting to find the votes. >> as meadows -- yes. as meadows here is trying to argue, to have his case moved from the state court to the federal court heading into a hearing on monday, the d.a.'s office is lining up witnesses including the secretary of state brad raffensperger. raffensperger has been subpoenaed to appear at that hearing along with three others who would have been privy to that phone call that donald trump made to the state of georgia asking them to find votes after the election that could flip the state in his favor though he had lost it. it's important at this phase because meadows is trying to argue he was acting as a government official. the d.a.'s office is saying this wasn't part of his job at all as a government official.

here's one of the things that meadows was saying on that call to raffensperger. >> what i'm hopeful for is there is some way that we can find some kind of agreement to -- to look at this a little bit more fully. you know, the president mentioned fulton county. but in some of these areas where there seems to be a difference of where the facts seem to lead. so mr. secretary, i was hopeful that in the spirit of cooperation and compromise is there something that we can at least have a discussion to look at some of these allegations to find a path forward that's less litigious. >> reporter: so there will be some legal theater on monday. the ability for brad raffensperger to testify under oath on how he felt about that

call, what he perceived it to be as it gets worked out. and that hearing is going to be really important because it's not going to be just about meadows ultimately. there are other officials who work for trump, maybe even trump himself, who could try to argue this case should be in federal court without cameras rather than state court. >> and it was important for you, katelyn, to play that sound again, not just what the former president said but meadows as well. these were results that were confirmed. there was no evidence of fraud. those things had already been explored. and yet they were asking in effect to overturn those results. katelyn polantz, thanks so much. let's go to the fulton county jail. that's where our paula reid is. the fulton county jail. that's where the former president is going to have to surrender himself today. >> reporter: that's exactly right, jim. while the former president is not expected to be here for at least another six hours or so, you're already seeing demonstrators, both in support of the former president and those opposed, coming here to

survey the scene and to gather. it's nearly 100 degrees and he's not going to be here for quite some time. but people still gathering here along with the world's media ahead of this historic surrender. now, the former president is expected to travel this afternoon from bedminster, new jersey here to georgia to surrender to the fulton county sheriff's office, which means he will go inside the building and be processed just like any other defendant. the district attorney is adamant that even though he is the former leader of the free world that he will be treated just like everyone else in this case. that includes fingerprints and possibly expected right now it is expected that he will have his mugshot taken. that's significant because in his federal cases and in his manhattan cases he did not have a mugshot taken. they decided they didn't need it because they're usually used if someone goes on the run to identify them. he's obviously one of the most famous people in the world and they wouldn't need it for that. but here at this point we do expect to have a mugshot taken.

he's only expected to be in georgia for about two hours before getting on a plane back to new jersey. there's already an increased security presence here, jim, and our colleagues reporting that we expect more resources from the surrounding areas including additional s.w.a.t. teams to come here to help with any potential problems they may have ahead of the surrender. >> well, we've witnessed a lot of remarkable things in the last few years. this is certainly going to be one of them this afternoon. paula reid at the fulton county jail. brianna. joining us now we have cnn senior legal analyst elie honig. he was an assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. elie, fulton county d.a. fani willis at this point now requesting an october trial date, which is right around the corner. is that too aggressive? do you think that's going to happen? >> that's absolutely unrealistic. that's not going to happen. and to be clear, when we say october, we mean 2023, not 2024. that is two months from now. here's what happened in this case. we have 19 charged defendants. one of them so far, mr.

cheseboro, has invoked his speedy trial rights. meaning he's entitled to have his trial start by november or so. and what the d.a. said today is fine, i'm going to try all 19 of you together in late october. the problem is while any defendant certainly has the right to say i want my speedy trial right you can't realistically force the ones who don't want that speedy trial right to go to trial that quickly. this is a case involving millions of documents, all sorts of video surveillance. there's no realistic way any defense lawyer can be forced to go through all of that in less than two months. >> so how does she break him off from the rest of the cases? >> so this is a legal concept called severance which happens all the time in multidefendant cases where the prosecutor gets to give his or her view of how the defendants should be divided up. the defendants really have more of a say here, get to say how they would like to be split up. ultimately, it's up to the judge. but the problem with forcing defendants to trial way before they're ready is you start to

run into constitutional problems. they have a sixth amendment right to fully prepare their defense. if kenneth cheseboro thinks he's ready in two months and wants to go, that's his prerogative. but you can't realistically force those who don't want to go that quickly to go quite that quickly. >> that makes sense. he with see trump shaking up his legal team just hours before his surrender. he's replaced his top georgia lawyer drew findling with atlanta-based attorney steven sadow. what does that tell you? >> well, it has to be either some sort of disagreement over money, which happens. sometimes they don't have the terms set out straight initially. it could be a disagreement over strategy. this happens sometimes. lawyers want to be more or less aggressive than the clooient. or it could simply be the personalities didn't match up. now we are ten days into this indictment and we are on defense lawyer two. i will say that's not wildly unreasonable. that's not completely unusual. but if i'm donald trump i want to stick with one person from here on out. you don't want to change a third

time. >> third time is not a charm as it were here. an attorney for rudy giuliani, brian tevis, was on cnn last night. listen to what he had to say about their defense and the timeline of a trial. >> it's very premature to be saying what is the defense going to be. i mean, you look at this indictment, it's very complex. racketeering in and of itself, rico indictments are very broad. they're very general. they leave themselves open to a lot of attacks to be made on the document itself. there's been some discussion about this scheduling order of could this case go to trial in march. we would be able to have motions that will go into march before you ever get to reviewing evidence on a case this size. >> so what does that tell you about what the realistic timeline is going to be for these other cases? >> yeah, i think what that attorney for rudy giuliani just said is completely consistent with what i said before. he's saying we're not even -- forget about getting through the millions of pages of discovery,

we have motions -- they do have complicated motions that are going to take months and months to litigate. he's talking there about march of next year, 2024, which is eight months from now. i think that shows you how utterly unrealistic it is to say we're going to force these people, all of them, to trial two months from now in october. >> and on monday georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger is set to testify at this hearing on former trump chief of staff mark meadows, his effort to move the georgia case to federal court. this is coming after last night when a federal judge ruled against both meadows and former ex-doj official jeffrey clark on whether they have to turn themselves in by tomorrow's surrender deadline without that other stuff totally reconciled here. what is the impact on the georgia proceedings if he does succeed in moving his case to federal court? >> yeah, if mark meadows succeeds in getting his case moved over to federal court, that's a good sign for the other federal officials in this case,

jeffrey clark and donald trump, although it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to win if one of them wins. because each of these determinations needs to be individualized. the key question the judge is going to ask as to mark meadows, as to jeffrey clark, and i think likely at some point as to donald trump is were they acting within the scope of their official federal job duties. this is why the d.a. wants brad raffensperger to come and testify, presumably she believes that his testimony will prove no, they were acting not just beyond the scope but they were acting as the d.a. has alleged criminally, which is sort of the opposite of what a person is supposed to do in a position like that. but it is possible that one or more of these defendants does make it over to federal court, which puts them on a different time frame, different jury pool, different judges. if any of these motions get granted, that's a game changer. >> that would be a huge development. we'll be watching for that. elie, thank you so much. >> thanks, brie. >> jim? >> donald trump gearing up for his surrender at a jail in georgia. what we're learning about his

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(vo) subaru is the national park foundation's largest corporate donor, helping expand access for all. soon the former president of the united states will leave his new jersey golf club for the fulton county, georgia jail where he will be booked on charges including conspiracy and racketeering. and in a last-minute shake-up trump replaced his top georgia defense lawyer. >> cnn's kristen holmes is just outside of bedminster. so kristen, tell us what more you're learning about these changes to trump's legal team. >> reporter: brianna and jim, we're still trying to get details on why exactly this happened. as you mentioned in the previous block, drew findling, who was one of the top lawyers representing trump in this georgia case, is being replaced

by another atlanta-based criminal defense attorney. his name is steven sadow. now, findling had been part of a lot of the negotiations of what we're going to see today with trump's surrender, with his processing as well as with that $200,000 bond. now, we do have a statement here from his new attorney, sadow, where he says, "we look forward to the case being dismissed or if necessary an unbiased, open-minded jury finding the president not guilty. prosecutions intended to advance and serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the president have no place in our justice system." clearly here he's referring to fani willis. that is something the former president himself has said that these charges were only brought against him because she is trying to advance her career. it should be noted that trump has not been hesitant in any way to shake up his legal team even in the 11th hour. we know back in june he removed two of his top attorneys after his indictment in that mar-a-lago documents case when

he was charged with mishandling classified documents. so again, this is a last-minute shake-up. we are still trying to learn the details of what exactly happened here. >> he's got a long hefrt of shaking up his legal team. and in fact one of his former lawyers is also charged in the case. rudy giuliani of course as well as others. you're going to see trump's motorcade leaving soon. what exactly is the choreography of getting a former president from his club to a jail in georgia? >> reporter: well, jim, i'm told this is a lot of negotiations between trump and the jail as well as the georgia highway police, law enforcement on the ground, all of them having the same goal, which is to get trump in and out of atlanta, in and out of that jail processed as quickly as possible. so we will see him here in just a few hours. he will go to the airport. will fly to atlanta. then we'll see him take a straight shot to that jail. it is supposed to be a very quick trip. they are telling us it will be in and out. then we are told to expect possible remarks with the

reporters that he is traveling with. but again, these are things that were negotiated between trump's team and law enforcement as well as trump's legal team and the jail with all the same goal in mind, i'm told, to try and get him out of the city without shutting down the entire city of atlanta. >> kristen holmes, thank you so much for the very latest there as we are awaiting what is going to be some pretty historic movement ahead today. and ahead on "cnn news central," eight gop contenders go toe to toe on the debate stage. so how did they answer the debate's biggest question about the front-runner, who wasn't even there? and it's been two months since he led an armed revolt against putin. did the russian president just get his revenge? putin just spoke out about yevgeny prigozhin, and we will bring you his comments ahead. get one free. th, for freeee. that's what i'm talking about. order in the subway app today.

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this is a live video feed of the fulton county jail, where former president trump will surrender in a matter of hours. but at last night's first republican primary debate most of the candidates on stage challenging trump for the nomination signaled that this moment in american history will not affect their loyalty pledge to whoever the ultimate candidate might be, even with a conviction. >> if former president trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him as

your party's choice? please raise your hand if you would. [ cheers and applause ] just -- hold on. so just to be clear, governor christie, you were kind of late to the game there but you raised your hand? >> no, i'm doing this. look, i'm doing this, not this. whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of president of the united states. >> i'm joined now by two cnn political commentators, van jones. former obama official scott jennings. former special assistant to president george w. bush. good to have you both. much to discuss. i want to begin with that moment on the stage but i don't want to purely focus on that moment because to be clear you had several candidates on stage, pence, haley, christie,

hutchinson among them who called out the president's behavior as unconstitutional. and of course christie was extremely critical there. taken together, scott jennings, what does not just the audience reaction and that pledge but the reaction of the former president's behavior tell you about his grip on the party? is it rock solid? is it showing some cracks? does it endure through this primary process? what do you think? >> well, right now he is the far and away front-runner. i didn't see anything last night that changed my opinion of that. i was a little surprised at the amount of support on the stage for mike pence on the question of did mike pence do the right thing on january 6th. most people said he did. vivek ramaswamy ducked it, of course. so that did surprise me. but overall you've got people up there raising their hand saying they're going to support a convicted felon maybe. and honestly, that puts them way out of step with american public opinion. 70% of americans in a quinnipiac

poll last week said convicted felons should not be eligible to be president. and that was also 58% of republicans inside of that. so they're out of step with where most people are. they're not out of step with donald trump's voters, but i don't think they have much of a chance of attracting his voters anyway. so the strategy of that continues to elude me. >> van jones, you were watching this closely. i wonder, a lot of this is about playing for second place at this point. can a viable or somewhat viable contender emerge? for so long of course the focus was on ron desantis. a lot of that has faded including after last night. did you see anyone that might emerge as that challenger as we get closer to the caucuses and the primaries? >> well, not anybody that's going to overtake trump. but as far as second place i think vivek ramaswamy went from nobody to somebody in a couple hours. most people never heard of the guy. and to see a 38-year-old kid get up there and body and bully

everybody and have the vice president punching down at him and him punching back, i think they really elevated him and i think probably to the detriment, long-term detriment of that party and of the country to have someone with as terrible ideas as he has, doesn't believe in global warming, doesn't want to support ukraine, doesn't want to support taiwan, doesn't want to support israel. he has the worst ideas. but man, he's got great delivery and i guess that's all that counts these days. >> i want to get to some of those issues there. but before we do, scott jennings, trump is going to walk into the fulton county jail this afternoon to be booked, to be arrested on multiple charges. he may very well be fingerprinted, have his mugshot taken. i know he has been successfully fund-raising off these things with his most loyal base. but at the end of the day is that actually a good look for him? does that actually strengthen him not just in the primaries but beyond? or is this a difficult and

damaging day for the former president? >> well, i think it depends on your audience. with republicans, i mean, donald trump treats being arrested like the super mario brothers treat red mushrooms. i mean, it makes him bigger and stronger every time it happens because even -- because even the republicans who don't want to vote for him believe that he is being politically persecuted. i know tons of republicans who have no intention of ever voting for trump again who still think he's getting a raw deal. if you just look inside the republican party, the polling is clear, the fund-raising is clear. yes, it has strengthened him. but go back to what i said before. among general election voters this is a terrible look. and if he were to be convicted, it is a terrible day for him. and i'll just say on the timeline there's every chance he could become the de facto nominee, say, in march or april, then get convicted of a crime over the summer and then everybody goes to the convention in august and they're asking the republican delegates to nominate a convicted felon when we know the american people don't want

that? it is very -- so overall damaging. but in the short term for him it's obviously popped for him. >> and we might have a trial sooner than expected. or at least that's what the fulton county d.a. is asking for in october. president biden's age came up and this morning nikki haley said there is no way joe biden is going to finish out the next term, we can't have an 81-year-old president, we have to have a new generational leader. polls show, it's not just a republican position but americans do have concerns about his age and frankly they would like choices other than not just trump and biden. if there is no credible effort now for the possibility of an alternative democratic candidate, should there be in your view? >> well, that's a tricky one. i think people are concerned about joe biden. they really are. i mean, democrats, they talk behind their hand. nobody wants to go on tv and say it because we all like to be able to go to barbecues and house parties.

but people are concerned. and i do think that anybody but trump going up against someone like biden given some of his challenges recently probably might have a good shot and could make that age an issue. the problem is when you put biden up against trump, trump has so many other issues, he's not that much younger, that it becomes a little bit of a wash and then people just kind of go back to their respective corners. >> but before we go just quickly if i can, scott, because this stood out to me. on the climate issue. how is it in the year 2023 when the science has shown this for decades and that's not partisan science, that's just the science, and by the way, maui has burned, the ashltharctic is melting, hurricanes sitting southern california, all these issues we're seeing every day, how is it many in the party won't address this honestly? >> well, i think there's different degrees of how they want to address it. you saw a huge gap between

ramaswamy's answer on this and, say, nikki haley last night. and obviously republicans have often believed that people on the progressive left have created alarm about this when the evidence doesn't warrant it. i would just say, though, as it came up in the debate ramaswamy made the big yet point of calling it a hoax. if you go back in time five months and pull up his interview that he gave, he was all in on climate change saying it existed and it was caused by human behavior. and so i do think on this topic and a few others but for him especially there was a little bit of playing to the crowd. but that's the problem with just saying what you think people in the room want to hear. eventually it catches up with you. and i suspect on that topic given the video i've seen today it's going to. >> good for you for fact-checking him there. scott jennings, van jones, thanks so much to both of you. brian brianna. >> we have much more coverage of the surrender of former president trump ahead, and we are also keeping an eye on the aftermath of that plane crash in russia which may have killed the leader of wagner -- of the wagner mercenary army. it's a crash that has many

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breaking news. there's a lot of it. new details coming from the fulton county courthouse. our zachary cohen is there. another agreement reached. what do we know? >> reporter: jim, a busy day here at the courthouse. jeffrey clark, the former trump administration department of justice official has agreed to a $100,000 bond agreement with the district attorney's office here. now, this obviously comes after trump's former white house chief of staff mark meadows also

reached a bond agreement for the same amount. and you know, we've now reached the point where 18 of the 19 defendants in this case here in georgia have agreed to a bond payment and we're now waiting for jeffrey clark along with mark meadows to surrender to the fulton county jail, which is the next step after a bond agreement is reached. now, if you'll remember, jeffrey clark is a justice department lawyer who at the end of the trump administration was really the only one in that building who was willing to go along with trump's various claims about election fraud. he wanted to pursue these various conspiracies about foreign interference and he was willing to really launch these investigations that others were not. and trump -- to the point where trump almost made him the acting attorney general at one point prompting the top official at the time to almost quit wholesale. jeffrey clark a key player in this broader effort to overturn the 2020 election, someone who fani willis in her indictment has really put at the center of some of these efforts to pressure justice department officials toward the end of trump's tenure. >> zachary cohen there outside the fulton county courthouse.

we will continue to keep eyes on all events there. we also have new -- we also have this new reporting in to cnn regarding the loss of that aircraft there yesterday carrying apparently yevgeny prigozhin, the leader of wagner. a fiery crash. u.s. officials telling myself and my colleagues, lauren lieberman and katie beau-lil'is that at its early stage of assessing this there's no indication a missile downed the airplane. u.s. officials say it has not seen information that the embraer legacy 600 aircraft was struck by either a surface to air missile or an air to air missile launched potentially from a russian jet. we should note the u.s. intelligence community has enormous resources to monitor and track such things. they can see via satellite and other means the launch of a missile from the ground or the air.

they can also detect -- this is the capability that's been used before in cases like this. they can detect explosions in the air as well. but again, the reporting we're learning now is at this point the u.s. has not seen indications that a missile downed prigozhin's plane. we will continue to bring you details as we learn them. brianna. russian president vladimir putin has broken his silence about the presumed death of wagner mercenary chief yevgeny prigozhin, who is believed to have been killed in that plane crash yesterday. putin delivering a televised statement just a short time ago. he offered his condolences. he described prigozhin as a man of difficult fate but talented. investigators do remain on the scene right now. they're getting a closer look at this fallen plane debris that russian state media says is scattered just over a mile across an open field. and this new satellite image shared exclusively with cnn shows the crash site is at the edge of a forest clearing where most of the wreckage was found largely intact but with a missing wing. joining us now we have kurt

volker, former u.s. ambassador to nato and former u.s. special representative for ukraine negotiations. he's also a senior adviser on the atlantic council and a distinguished fellow at the center for european policy analysis. ambassador, thanks for being with us. what do you think about this latest reporting that jim has here where it appears that this is not a missile, at least that is what u.s. officials are believing, but it does look like it's intentional? >> i can't speak to the new information that it is not a missile. i haven't seen what that is based on. when you look at the original videos that came out, you see a smoke trail that appears to be short, small and curved as a missile might do. so it's not exactly clear what happened. that being said, the way to think about this is the most

obvious explanation, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. and this is where vladimir putin wants to eliminate prigozhin because prigozhin challenged his authority. and this is something vladimir putin wants to to do demonstrably and do so as a way to re-establish his power in russia. and i think that is clearly what happened. the mechanism, surface to air, air to air, bomb on the plane, which is very doubtful, those are things that okay, we can investigate them. but let's not lose the big picture. putin did this on purpose in order to re-establish his authority. >> let's talk about the big picture because this didn't happen in a vacuum. this happened amid a backdrop of putin purging generals including general surovikin. how should this, the death of prigozhin as well, change how the u.s. and european allies relate to vladimir putin right now or understand his calculus about the war in ukraine?

>> well, hopefully it doesn't change anything because hopefully we already understand that this is who he is. he is a mafia-like leader in charge of a state that has nuclear weapons. he is ruthless. he kills his opponents, whether it's litvinenko or skripal or even people thrown out of buildings in moscow or even one in washington, d.c. we shouldn't change our calculus here. we should recognize that we are dealing with an authoritarian leader who believes it is his mission to rebuild the russian empire and it is in america's interest to make sure that he is not able to do that because if he does it will begin to threaten our interests directly. >> right after prigozhin's attempted revolt in june a couple months ago you said that prigozhin, quote, popped the double of the ukraine war ending. do you think that that's still the case now that he is dead and as we see this sort of purging

of military leaders? >> yes, i do. because i don't think we would be seeing prigozhin being knocked off and this purging of military leaders unless there was a bigger strife going on under the surface. so what i was saying in that article you're referring to is this is the beginning of the end of russia's war in ukraine. the russians have realized it's failing. and prigozhin is the one who said it publicly. he gained a lot of support domestically from military and civilian as he tried to move into russia because he had said that. because people knew that that was the truth. so yes, he may now be dead. others may now be under arrest or dead as well. but this is evidence actually of more turmoil inside the system in russia, which is what is ultimately going to bring an end to this war. >> big debate last night in the republican primary, gop candidates were asked about u.s. support for ukraine, and here is what they said.

>> is there anyone on stage who would not support the increase of more funding to ukraine? would not support it. >> europe needs to step up. [ cheers and applause ] i would have europe step up and do their job. >> mr. ramaswamy, you would not support an increase of funding to ukraine? >> i would not. and i think this is disastrous. that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else's border when we should use those same military resources to prevent across the invasion of our own southern border here in the united states of america. >> so ramaswamy, desantis playing to that. trump of course wasn't on the stage. he's also hesitant in his support for ukraine. what do you think about what you heard? >> well, it's a false choice. of course we need to defend the southern border. and i think it is out of control. i think we do need to do more there. but that doesn't mean that we should forsake our national security interests in order to do that. it is in america's national

security interests to see that russian authoritarianism, imperialism and genocide is stopped in ukraine before it goes somewhere else. it's a vital interest for us. and the fact that we are seeing one of our major adversaries tear themselves apart based on our using 3% of our annual defense budget to help ukraine, that is a bargain. i don't see a problem with that. so i think we need to do both, not view them as alternatives. >> yeah. a bargain, you say, but certainly that is not how the republican base at this point sees it. and we certainly saw that in the debate last night. ambassador, great to have you. thank you so much for being with us. >> thank you. thanks very much. >> jim? >> right now activity picking up outside the fulton county jail, where the former president must surrender later today. barricades are up. police are on standby in tactical gear. a look at security preparations ahead of former president trump's arrival to be arrested

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we are following the potentially volatile situation in atlanta in the hours ahead of trump's arrival and surrender on state charges tied to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election there. s.w.a.t. teams are now deployed at the fulton county jail, where

he will surrender himself. and at the district attorney's office. police are on high alert, as well. trump's supporters and protesters have arrived in advance of the former president and his entourage. cnn's nick valencia is there. nick, i wonder, in previous days and in other appearances, the number of protesters underwhelmed. what kind of numbers are you seeing there now? >> reporter: it's different now, jim. even before the sun came up, we saw trump supporters here. there's a lot of pressure on law enforcement. they are on high alert, if only because the former president is the most high-profile person to ever step foot in the fulton county jail. according to sources, several law enforcement agencies are working in coordination in and around the fulton county jail complex, if only, or in part because the former president's explosive rhetoric regarding this case. he's called fani willis a racist, he says this is politically motivated and put an all-call out for his supporters to come out and do just that.

so we saw supporters walking up and down this street with signs. others honking in support of the president. they have since shut this street down to the public. you only see security vehicles coming up and down here. the crowds, however, have moved to the other side of this facility. and in response to that, we saw several tactical teams of police respond to those crowds. the environment, though, has been controlled. there's been no issue there so far, but there are certainly crowds out there. look, the reality of this is that many of those attached to this case have received death threats. first, it was the fulton county district attorney who got death threats, so much so that she had to change her personal security detail. then the fulton county grand juries. they themselves were threatened with violence, and even the leadership here of the fulton county sheriff's office has seen death threats themselves and threats to their personal homes. all of that contributing to this heightened alert here and this environment ahead of the former president's visit. jim? >> nick valencia, watching it closely there. thanks so much. brianna? >> here in the next few hours, former president trump will surrender at the fulton county

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we are just hours away from a truly remarkable moment in american history. a former president turng