Former President Donald Trump was booked at the Fulton County jail Thursday night on state charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Trump was fingerprinted and a booking photo, commonly known as a mugshot, was taken of the former president and later released to the public. Trump is facing charges in four separate criminal cases, but this is the first time he had a mugshot taken.
Trump is facing 13 separate counts in Georgia, including a racketeering charge and several fraud and false statement counts. The deadline for Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the case to turn themselves in is Friday.
Former President Donald Trump said he feels some sympathy for his co-defendants in the Georgia elections case, saying their “lives are destroyed” by the criminal charges.
“Those people that have been so unfairly dragged into this, these are high-quality people who don’t even know why they were brought in,” Trump said in an interview with Newsmax several hours after he was booked in a Georgia county jail.
“Those people have to be released. They have to be released from this horrible thing that they’re going through,” he added.
Trump is one of 19 defendants charged in a sprawling RICO indictment that accuses them of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 Georgia presidential election.
Trump also noted that some of his co-defendants “don’t have a lot of money, and some of them have almost nothing.”
The former president dodged a question about whether he sees his co-defendants as a “team.”
Trump is a billionaire, but he has not offered to contribute to the legal defense costs of the people charged alongside him in Georgia.
Trump has been booked and released, but he has not yet been arraigned on his 13 criminal counts in the Georgia election interference case.
Atlanta DA Fani Willis suggested in a court filing last week that Trump and the 18 other defendants in the case should be arraigned during the week of Sept. 5.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has said that some arraignments may be conducted virtually.
In the meantime, Trump’s attorney signaled that they will fight Willis over her proposal for an Oct. 23 trial date, just two months away.
Trump’s attorney said in a court filing earlier Thursday that they also plan to sever his case from co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro, who seeks a speedy trial.
Another co-defendant, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, faces a Monday morning hearing in U.S. District Court in Atlanta over his bid to move the state-level election case to federal court.
Trump has left Atlanta, but the extra security around the jail where he surrendered will stay in place for the time being, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
“Added security will remain in place at the Fulton County Jail. Officers will also continue to ensure a safe space for protestors,” the statement said.
“However, anyone who breaks the law will be arrested and face appropriate consequences.”
The sheriff’s office also said that it expected seven of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference to surrender at the jail before the deadline Friday. Eleven other co-defendants have already surrendered earlier this week.
A bomb threat was made at the Atlanta courthouse where Trump would stand trial.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, which dealt with Trump’s booking at a jail, responded to the bomb threat at the Fulton County Courthouse.
K-9 units and police were en route to the courthouse, NBC News reported.
Trump declared his innocence and claimed that he was the victim of “election interference” after being arrested and booked in Georgia on his latest batch of criminal charges.
“I did nothing wrong,” asserted Trump, who slammed the case as a “travesty of justice” shortly before re-boarding his private jet.
“This is their way of campaigning,” Trump said, digging in on the baseless claim that his 91 criminal counts in four active cases were filed as part of a conspiracy to sabotage his presidential candidacy.
“We have every single right to challenge an election that we think is dishonest,” Trump told reporters on an Atlanta airport tarmac.
Former President Donald Trump’s mugshot taken at the Fulton County jail is set to be a key tool for his campaign to raise money for his 2024 bid for president, and to help pay for his legal fees, according to one of his digital fundraisers.
“It will be the single most powerful photo in the history of online fundraising,” the pro-Trump digital fundraiser explained.
The person, who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about private plans, suggested to CNBC that the Trump campaign would use that mugshot to raise money.
Virtually all of Trump’s fundraising appeals in the buildup to him being arrested in Georgia have called on donors to give toward his political operation, with about 10% of each of those donations going to his leadership PAC. That committee has spent millions of dollars on Trump’s legal fees so far this year.
Less than 20 minutes after he arrived at the Fulton County Jail, Trump departed the building in a motorcade that appeared to be headed back to an Atlanta airport.
It was not immediately clear if Trump would deliver remarks before re-boarding his private jet.
After his recent arraignment in a separate federal case in Washington, D.C., Trump briefly approached reporters on the airport tarmac to rail against President Joe Biden and the nation’s capital itself.
