indictment in Georgia
Historical event: Trump is being treated by the identification service in prison – including a mugshot
Former US President Donald Trump during identification at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia
© Uncredited / Fulton County Sheriff’s Office / AP / DPA
The fact that Donald Trump is in the dock has almost become normal in the USA. But having an ex-president appear in jail and pose for a mugshot stands out even in these times.
The Republican presidential candidate had to present himself to the authorities there on Thursday evening (local time) after charges against him related to attempted election fraud. Shortly after leaving prison, the 77-year-old used the memorable mugshot to return to successor platform X, more than two and a half years after his last Twitter post. There he posted the picture without a police emblem, but with the slogan: “Never give up!”
Donald Trump is the first US President to wear a Mughsot
Trump had already used the previous charges against him for campaign purposes to mobilize his base and raise funds. With success. The unprecedented mugshot from Atlanta now offers him the martyr image to portray the prosecution against him as nothing more than an attempt by his political opponents to prevent him from running for a second term.
Trump is the first ex-President of the United States to face impeachment. Not once, but four times. Trump is now the first ex-president to appear in prison and have a police photo taken. In the three other cases in New York, Miami and Washington in which the Republican was charged, the authorities had refrained from such an image. The photo from Atlanta should now go down in history.
In the Georgia capital, Trump is charged with 18 other suspects over his attempts to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in the state. The prosecutor’s office had given the Republican and the other defendants until this Friday to report voluntarily to the law enforcement authorities in Atlanta. Trump complied on Thursday evening. However, unlike those in the other criminal proceedings, the authorities in Atlanta did not grant him any exemptions.
A notorious prison
With a large entourage, Trump appeared in the district jail in Atlanta, endured the formalities and the photo. About 20 minutes later, his motorcade left the prison grounds. Shortly thereafter, Trump left Atlanta on his private plane – but not without complaining bitterly about the prosecution against him before boarding the machine.
Ex-US President under pressure
Donald Trump has these legal problems on his hands
The Fulton County jail in Atlanta where Trump had to appear is not just any place. The prison is notorious. The US Department of Justice launched an investigation into prison conditions there in July after a prisoner died in a cell covered in lice and dirt and other dramatic reports from inside the prison leaked to the public: of excess violence, guns circulating en masse, ominous deaths and deterioration of the building.
The fact that the 45th President of the United States had to appear at this exact spot in order to have his personal details taken after an indictment already has a new quality in terms of external impact. This is all the more true for the police photo. It is the preliminary climax in an unprecedented series of charges against the former top man in the state. And also a pointer to Trump as to what might be in store for him.
A return after a long time
Trump likes to pose like in the police photo – wants to look determined, powerful, unyielding. He doesn’t like looking weak. It is his way of converting an actually precarious legal situation and exploiting it politically for himself. The fact that he chooses this picture as an occasion to report back to Twitter successor X with a bang fits into his pattern.
Towards the end of his term, Trump was blocked from major online platforms after his supporters stormed the seat of Parliament in Washington on January 6, 2021 – precisely because of his campaign against the outcome of the 2020 election, which also brought him prosecution in Georgia. Before the unprecedented outbreak of violence, Trump had goaded his supporters with the unfounded claim that he had been cheated out of the 2020 presidential election. In his online messages before and after the Capitol attack, he openly showed sympathy for the rioters. The platform operators therefore feared that there could be new violence if Trump were not banned – and blocked his accounts.
Trump has since regained access to all major online services, where he still has millions of followers. He reported back on several channels. However, he has remained silent on the Twitter platform, which has recently been renamed X. Instead, he had built a Twitter copy, the Truth Social platform.
On Twitter, Trump’s account was activated again last fall at the instigation of the new owner Elon Musk. The last Trump tweet there so far, however, was from January 2021. Before and during his tenure in the White House, Twitter was Trump’s most important mouthpiece. There he had more than 80 million followers until the ban and achieved worldwide attention with his messages.
In the current election campaign, Trump could benefit from greater online reach. At Truth Social he only has six million subscribers, at X there are still more than 86 million – despite the long silence. His post there was liked a hundred thousand times within a very short time.