Once it became clear that former President Donald Trump was looking seriously at the possibility of a criminal indictment, some looked at the possibility that the ex-president will have to do the sorts of things that defendants do when they are accused of crimes. And one of those is a mugshot.
A Donald Trump mugshot would have the potential to emerge as an iconic image, both among those who love and hate Donald Trump.
Anti-Trump folks would be able to celebrate a politician they loathe being arrested, while pro-Trump folks would almost certainly put the image on t-shirts or posters as if Trump were Lenny Bruce, or Jim Morrison, or Frank Sinatra.
The early Trump indictments, for various reasons, did not lead to mugshots, only the former president getting fingerprinted. But, per one report, the Georgia indictment announced this week will lead to the release of one.
“Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mugshot ready for you,” Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said earlier this month, as reported by The New Republic.
It has not yet been made clear when Trump is expected to appear in court in Georgia, although the defendants have until August 25 to surrender to authorities.
In the former president’s fourth indictment of the year, and the most sweeping, a grand jury in Fulton County handed down a total of 41 criminal accounts against 19 different defendants. Named in the indictment are numerous household names, including former New York Mayor-turned-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and attorneys John Eastman, John Clark, Jeffrey Ellis, and Sidney Powell.
Others named in the indictment included those accused of specific wrongdoing in Georgia, including the alleged breach of a voting system in one Georgia county and the “fake electors” scheme.
Trump was charged under Georgia’s state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, among other charges.
“Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020,” the indictment states. “One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”
In the case, 13 counts are against Trump personally, which adds to the 4 counts he’s charged with in the federal election subversion case, 40 counts in the classified documents case, and 34 counts in the New York fake documents case, and bringing the total number of criminal counts to 91.
As he often has whenever he has been accused of any wrongdoing at any point, Trump himself is claiming the indictment is a “witch hunt.”
“So, the Witch Hunt continues! 19 people Indicated [sic] tonight, including the former President of the United States, me, by an out of control and very corrupt District Attorney who campaigned and raised money on, ‘I will get Trump,’” Trump said on Truth Social late Monday. “And what about those Indictment Documents put out today, long before the Grand Jury even voted, and then quickly withdrawn? Sounds Rigged to me! Why didn’t they Indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign. Witch Hunt!”
The “indictment documents” is a reference to a document appearing briefly on the website of the county court earlier in the day, before it was quickly deleted; it ended up matching the real indictment. It appears the most likely explanation was that someone in the IT department of the court pressed the wrong button to switch a document from draft to published.
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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