Donald Trump's mug shot was released on Thursday (August 24) evening after he was booked at an Atlanta jail on more than a dozen felony charges as part of a wide-ranging criminal case stemming from the former U.S. president's attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia, Reuters reports.
An unsmiling Trump - inmate no. P01135809, according to Fulton County Jail records - was captured glaring at the camera in the mug shot. Trump spent only about 20 minutes at the jail before heading back to his New Jersey golf club. Before boarding his private plane at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport, he repeated his claim that the prosecution - along with the others he faces - is politically motivated.
Trump, 77, already has entered uncharted territory as the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges, even as he mounts another campaign for the White House next year. Far from damaging his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination, however, the four cases filed against him have only bolstered his standing. He holds a commanding polling lead in the Republican race to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election.
Trump faces 13 felony counts in the Georgia case, including racketeering, which is typically used to target organized crime, for pressuring state officials to reverse his election loss and setting up an illegitimate slate of electors to undermine the formal congressional certification of Biden's 2020 victory.
