The Art of the Mug Shot: Trump Surrenders in Georgia

Former President Trump surrendered to Georgia authorities on Thursday evening after his indictment earlier this month in connection to his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state in the 2020 presidential election.

Frank Sinatra. Bill Gates. Martin Luther King Jr. David Bowie. Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Lindsey Lohan. Paris Hilton. Rudy Giuliani. And now, Donald Trump joins the ranks of famous celebrities, politicians, and activists who’ve had their mugshot taken after run-ins with law enforcement.

Former President Trump surrendered to Georgia authorities on Thursday evening after his indictment earlier this month in connection to his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump became the first president or former president to have a criminal mugshot taken when he was booked at the Fulton County Jail near Atlanta. The former president was fingerprinted, and his height was recorded as 6’3.” Trump claimed he weighed in at 215lbs.
Trump appeared to scowl at the camera and wore one of his trademark blue suits and red power ties for his appearance at the Fulton County Jail. Trump was released on a $200,000 bond and spend less than two hours on the ground before flying back to New Jersey.
The former president was recorded as Inmate No. p01135809 in the Fulton County Jail records.
Trump returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, for the first time since January 8, 2021 on Thursday night. The president’s first post on the site inextricably linked to his rise as a political figure was a photo of his mugshot with the caption “Election interference. Never surrender!”
The 2024 Republican frontrunner faces 13 felony charges in Georgia, including racketeering, setting up a false slate of electors in the Peach State to undermine congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory and pressuring state officials.

The Washington Post compared Trump’s mugshot to snapshots of some of history’s heroes and villains. The article included dictators like V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini; criminals like Al Capone and Lee Harvey Oswald; civil rights icons like Rosa Parks and John Lewis; celebrities like Jane Fonda, O.J. Simpson, and Nick Nolte; and politicians like John Edwards, Rick Perry, and Tom DeLay. Edwards, Perry, and DeLay were all smiles – and all were later acquitted.
New York Magazine collected the mugshots of Trump and his co-defendants in the Georgia election RICO trial. Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis and Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer both smiled for the camera, while Giuliani, former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and former Trump legal advisors Syndey Powell and John Eastman glowered.
The New York Times reported from the scene: “The nation’s former commander in chief walked into a notorious jail, one that has been cited in rap lyrics and is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation into unsanitary and unsafe conditions, including allegations that an “incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth.”

Trump later said his booking at the Fulton County Jail was a “terrible experience,” according to the New York Post. “I came in, I was treated very nicely — but it is what it is. I took a mug shot. I had never heard the word mug shot,” Trump told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly. “They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.”
The Wall Street Journal assessed how Trump and his legal team could “attack” the prosecution’s RICO case against him in Georgia. Trump and his co-defendants are “likely” to pursue two key strategies when arguing for the defense: “that there was no criminal enterprise, and that even if there were, they didn’t individually participate in it.”
Fox News noted Trump’s post on X has been shared more than 330,000 times and had 120 million impressions as of Friday morning. His return for the platform could be “the best thing” to happen to X since Elon Musk took it over last year.

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