From New York, this is Democracy Now.

If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him

as your party's choice?

Raise your hand if you would.

Republican presidential candidates faced off in their first debate Wednesday night, but

frontrunner Donald Trump refused to take part.

Later today, he'll turn himself in at the Fulton County jail to face charges for attempting

to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

He'll air excerpts of the Republican debate in Milwaukee.

But first, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, if Gennie Pergogian, has apparently

died in a plane crashing Russia two months after he let a failed mutiny against Putin, will

get the latest as questions swirl over what happened.

All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the Warren Peace Report, I'm Amy Goodman.

Examples in Russia, say the mercenary leader of Gennie Pergogian, was among 10 people killed

Wednesday when a private jet crashed northwest of Moscow.

The crash also reportedly killed Dimitri Utkin, senior mercenary commander who founded the

Wagner group in 2014.

I witnesses to the crash reported hearing two bangs before the plane tumbled from the

sky, an incident that was apparently captured in a video widely circulated on social media.

The crash sparked widespread speculation, Pergogian and other Wagner leaders were assassinated

for leading a failed mutiny in June that saw heavily armed mercenaries advance to within

...